Hi!
I'm very new to VMware products, though I've done a bit of training and bought some books. Now I have a project dropped suddenly in my lap.. to move an existing ESX 4.0 based cluster (5 hosts, and NetApp storage) to shiny new ESXi 5.1 hosts (3 of them). Two of the new servers are supposed to be at the primary site, and the 3rd in a failover site. The 5.1 hosts are to use the same data stores as the 4.0 servers.
There are about 45 virtual machines in the old cluster.
I'm wondering what is the best way to do this?
Im thinking I should
1. upgrade the 4.0 VCenter VM to 5.1,
2. add the new 5.1 ESXi hosts to the current 4.0 cluster,
3. migrate the vms to the new ESXi hosts (vmotion, storage vmotion?),
4. remove old hosts from the cluster,
5. upgrade vmware tools on the VMs.
The problems I have are the actual migrations, and how to setup the 3rd esxi host as disaster recovery. Is any of this possible like i described it? What should I watch out for, and what are the pitfalls?
Any assistance would be appreciated!
Thanks!