Existing failed ESXi 5.5.1. Possible to overlay a new install and repopulate?

[S_Raney]

 

Good day,  

Please excuse the Noob looking for help.  I suspect I'm posting this in the wrong area, so please guide me where I should post.  I thought I would post for help here first before contacting support and burning our hours.

I am facing an odd issue with some ESXi 5.5.1 Standalone hosts i just inherited into our pool of servers. A pair of them have failed at the kernel level and are reporting errors I can not dissect.   I have been asked if it would be possible to overlay a fresh image over them and keep the existing VM's intact.  We have licenses for 7, but I'm not sure if its even possible. 

Types of errors we are seeing.

[e_espinel]

Hello.
You should check the hardware error log on the server through the BIOS or by logging into the management device (such as IMM, BMc, ILO and so on).
If no hardware errors are found, you could first try to install using the Build 9919047 ISO (Version 5.5 U3k) with the install option and preserve the VMFS. You will then need to reconfigure the ESXi host (hostname, ip, and so on).

As a previous step you should make a full backup of all the VMs that are on this ESXi host or transfer them to an external storage.

For version 5,   don't think your hardware supports version 7.0 so you should verify its compatibility.

https://my.vmware.com

http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/search.php

[S_Raney]

Thank you for the suggestion.   The bios logs are not showing any errors, someone over install turned the reporting off.  I'll go ahead and reinstall with the suggested option.