Yes, absolutely you can do these operations without any outage. If you are doing this by using UI (VI client or Web client) 1. First vMotion all the VMs from other 4 old host to a old host ...
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Yes, absolutely you can do these operations without any outage. If you are doing this by using UI (VI client or Web client) 1. First vMotion all the VMs from other 4 old host to a old host where compellent storage array access available. -Make sure old host with compellent access has enough CPU/Memory so that all ON VMs can be placed. - Also make sure all old host have shared storage array except compellent (that is available on one old host), I think it is there already. 2. Now storage vMotion all the VMs to old host compeleent storage array. -This can be done using script or manually 3. Remove old host (with compellent ) from older vCenter server. 4. Create one cluster on new 5.5 vCenter and add all host (1 old + 2 new ) to cluster. 5. Enable DRS in fully automated mode with aggressive threshold. and make sure vMotion network is configured properly. 6. Put old host into maintenance mode. DRS will automatically vacate the old host and balance the load on other new hosts as well. 7. Wait for all the vMotion operation to complete, old host wud be now in Maintenace mode. 8. Remove old host from cluster and exit from MM and remove from new vCenter. Note: -You can configure VMware HA/FT on the cluster to avoid any possible failure (Make sure you satisfy HA/FT requirement) -If possible explore XVMotion, which helps to relocate VM even there is no shared datastore. -If you want to use script to do vMotion/SVMOtion, get back to me. -Let me know if you have any doubt Plz award points if this is useful.