How to move VM's from 1 host to a new HA Cluster without Datastore access

[jbethune]

I just finished setting upa 3 host cluster with a SAN. I have my old (5.1 esxi) host with local storage on the same network but cannot access the SAN from it. I want to migrate or move all the VM's from the single host to my new 3 host cluster but I am unsure how to accomplish this. I am full licensing on my essentials plus new cluster for cpu's. Should I just move the vm's 1 by one somehow? I would by theory like to bring the single host over to the cluster temporarily and migrate those vm's to the new SAN datatore. Is this possible? The hosts all reside on the same network(VLAN).

Thanks

[weinstein5]

The best route is to do a V2V using VMware's Standalone COnverter -

[admin]

Is the old Esxi host part of the same vCenter server, if so then we should be able to move VM's across the cluster/Data center provided the VM's are powered off or  Add Host to the same cluster and do a storage vMotion. The Host is part of a different VC then you might have to migrate each VM with a V2V using the VMware converter

[a_p_]

With all hosts running v5.1 it should be easy to migrate the VMs. I'd go ahead, temporarily remove one of the new hosts from vCenter (Essentials only supports up to 3 hosts) and add the "old" host. You should then be able to migrate the VMs using "Migrate Host and Datastore" (using the Web Client), without even having the old host connected to the new storage. If the hosts/CPUs are compatible, you may even be able to migrate the VMs online. Only vMotion needs to be configured properly.

André