vSAN Stretched Cluster Upgrade and Migration to new Hosts procedure

[MJMSRI]

Hi All,

i have a project to upgrade and migrate vSAN to new Hosts. Current infrastructure is:

• 3 Sites, vSAN Stretched Cluster
• Site 1 has ESXi 6.0 Host and virtual vSAN Witness appliance
• Site 2 has 3 x ESXi vSAN 6.0 Hosts
• Site 3 has 3 x ESXi vSAN 6.0 Hosts
• 1 x Windows Based vCenter Server within vSAN Cluster on Site 2

The project is to upgrade to vSphere 6.7 so thats ESXi 6.7, vSAN 6.7 and VCSA 6.7 aswell as replace the 6 x vSAN Hosts due to age and migrate to VCSA from Windows. My plan is to do the below, do you believe this is the best approach?

1. Perform a vCenter Migration with the Migration Utility on VCSA ISO from windows to a new VCSA within the existing Cluster. So this will keep all the existing config like vSAN Configuration, vDS networking, etc.
2. Install ESXi 6.7 on 6 x New hosts, align to VCG for vSAN, Firmware, etc
3. Add Hosts to the existing vSAN Cluster
4. Contribute 6 x New Hosts Storage to vSAN Cluster
5. Enter old vSAN Host 1 from site 1 into maintenance mode and select "Full Data Migration", once complete remove host from cluster
6. once above complete enter old vSAN Host 1 from site 2 into maintenance mode and select "Full Data Migration", once complete remove host from cluster
7. Repeat the above for old vSAN Host 2 and 3 from each site, once complete remove host from cluster which will result in just the 6 new hosts within the Cluster

Thanks

[depping]

Why wouldn't you simply build a new environment with a new vCenter Server and Storage vMotion the VMs to the new environment? Seems much easier to me, and less risky.

[MJMSRI]

Thanks depping for the reply, so with this approach i would setup the new 6 hosts across the both sites and a new vCenter. Would i then add the new vCenter to the same SSO Domain vSphere.local so that ELM is in place to do the storage vMotion?