VMware vCenter stuck "In Process"

We recently had serveral unexplainable issues with our VMware vCenter Server would have task hang "In Process" untill the vCenter server or services where restarted. Normally the solution most post say is to restart ESX Mgmt-vmware service like so:


 service mgmt-vmware restart

However after all my trouble shooting failed and tracing kernal logs in ESX it became clear to myself and VMware support that the task were simply never reaching the ESX hosts. This took a lot of convincing on my part to vmware but eventually VMware support agreed with me.  We then took a closer look at our vCenter server and found that the Database was running SQL 2008 Service Pack 1.

VMware support said that they didn't yet support SQL 2008 Service Pack 1 and that odd behavior they couldn't describe or explain sometime occurred. I agreed to change the Database back to a SQL 2008 without service pack 1 and figured it would take a day or so.

How wrong I was.

There is no DB downgrade path for SQL 2008 SP1. I tried several methods to migrate the database but in the end the only solution was to recreate the vCenter as a clean install. It was hard but worth it in the end. I had to remove each ESX ever and reconnect it to the new vCenter. This was made much more difficult because I use Nexus 1000 distributed switches. I then remove a VM from inventory on the old vCenter then added it to inventory on the new vCenter. I required nightly outages until finally all the VM's were migrated.

I don't recommended this process unless there is no other method available. It did resolve my problem but I had to kill the patient in order to do so.

Links
vCenter Server displays the error: Failed to connect to host