Just starting to read up on upgrade procedures, figured while I do that I should ask here as well
I have an ESX 2.5.1 environment with 39 VM's on old hardware (have separate 3.0 licenses for this environment) \[2x Dell 6850 + Dell 1850 for VC]
Purchased new ESX and VC hardware (with new 3.0 licenses for this environment) \[6x HP DL380 + Dell 1850 for VC]
All data lives on NetAPP lun's, esx boot drives as well as VMFS
End result is old environment would be repurposed offsite and new environment would be ESX3.0
What is considered best practice for conversion/migration in this scenario?
So far I am considering the below methods (still researching)
1. Build new DL380 environment with VC2.x, decommission old VC1.x server, connect both ESX2.5.1 & ESX 3.x to new VC2.x server and use vmotion and then repurpose old dell 6850's
2. Same as #1 but upgrade to latest 2.x.x which will involve upgrading vmdks
3. Upgrade old Dell 6850 environment to ESX 3.x, upgrade vmdk's, vmotion servers to new HP DL380 environment, repurpose Dell 6850 environment
4. Decom Dell 6850 environment, Build DL380 environment, mount OLD SAN VMFS LUN's to new DL380 environment, use vconverter/vmfstools to convert vmdks to new lun's in DL380 environment
