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clwoody
Contributor
Contributor

Upgrade advice from VI Foundation to Vsphere Essentials....

Hi All, first post here....

The business i work for recently bought a small business that has VI Foundation 3. This is running on 2 x HP DL380 G4 servers using local storage. The server hardware is getting old and the support agreement has expired, so i am try to persuade management that this small setup needs a visit it terms of hardware and software refresh.The number of VM's is small, about 8.

I am considering implementing a low cost iscsi SAN solution with Vsphere essentials (or +). I guess i am looking for advice on what an appropriarte method would be on migrating existing VM's under VI3 environment into vSphere and of course if there is anything in particular i should look out for for or avoid !

Many thanks in advance.

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TimPhillips
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Because in your edition vMotion is not available, you will have to face with downtime, while you`ll be copying files to SAN. The simpliest way to do it - connect your SAN LUN to ESX 4 initiator and move VMs there. About SAN I would recommend you to give a try to StarWind - AFAIK it`s the most cost-effective SAN Solution. You can get it here or here.