Hardware refresh migration to new Dell XC blocks. How to do it? Issit hard?

I think the steps you mentioned is OK. Another way is to build a new 3 node cluster with new HW. Then using vMotion to migrate workloads from the current old ESXi cluster to new ESXi cluster.

Thanks. But can nutanix cluster with older hardware add in new nodes with newer hardware?

But how do I vmotion the VMs when the old and new vms are running in different clusters?

But can nutanix cluster with older hardware add in new nodes with newer hardware?

→ My comments: I think the answer is Yes. You can mix older hardware and new hardware in one cluster. But because the CPU generation gap, I think the best practice is the CPU generation gap is not very large.

how do I vmotion the VMs when the old and new vms are running in different clusters?

-->My comments: Try VMware vMotion to do online migration. 

Some many options to do this. But first the biggest question is: Do you still want to continue to use VMWare as the hypervisor or is this the time to switch over to AHV?

Keep VMware as the hypervisor options:

1. Foundation the new nodes with the same versions as you production nodes. Do a cluster expansion. Remove the old nodes from the cluster and the current running virtual machines will automatically migrate to the new nodes. Reboot the virtual machines so that they get the new CPU architecture ;) 
2. Create a complete new cluster of the three nodes. Attach the new cluster to the same vCenter. Migrate the virtual machines to the new cluster via vCenter. For the Prism Central migration, add the new cluster to the same prism central. Make a backup (in prism central management) to the new cluster, restore Prism Central on the new Cluster. 

Switch over to AHV, to same lots of money, options: 

Foundation the new nodes with AHV and create a new clusters. Install Prism Central. Now you have a couple of options, the easiest is to install a freshly Prism Central installtion on the new cluster and connect the old and new cluster to each other via availability zones. Make sure Nutanix NGT is installed on every virtual machine (so you can you cross hypervisor migrations) and migrate the virtual machines to the new cluster. You can also use Nutanix Move to do the migrations. 

Personally I really look into the step to go to AHV ;) 

Thanks Boss,

I will use back Vmware because my DR site only supports VMware infra.

But new hardware for new Dell XC nodes can merged into existing cluster? So long they run the same version of AOS? 

Yes they can. The easiest method is to foundation the new nodes with the same esx and aos version and then expand the existing cluster with the new nodes. 

Thanks, the problem now is my old xc nodes is running on esxi 7.03 and the new ones will be running on esxi 8. I do not think my older nodes can support esxi 8.

Can I just update the aos on the older nutanix nodes to match the new ones. and then slowly add in the new nodes into existing cluster. let the replication run on the cluster and then slowly shutdown the old vms and then add them into the new esxi server and boot them up?

after that slowly remove the older nodes from the cluster?

No, because the new node will then run esx 8. 
 

1. Foundation the new nodes with the same esx (7.03) and AOS as the old ones. 
2. Expand cluster (adding the new nodes to the existing cluster)
3. Remove the old nodes. 
4. Reboot the vm’s so they have the new cpu architecture. 
5. LCM the cluster to esx8 and latest aos. 

Thanks Boss. I will try. Maybe I will speak to Dell Pre Sales and whether do they provide professional services for hardware refresh so I do not need to do all these?

Thanks boss. I will read your link is detail and ask u anything if unsure.

Likely I will seek for Dell to provide professional services from Nutanix engineers to do the expansion. This is a production setup so I better becareful.  

Boss, Can I ask you one final question for this episode?

The older Nutanix cluster is running on Intel processors / SSD for the first harddisks and iscsi motor harddisks for the rest of the storage.

If I purchased new nodes running on SSD fully but on Intel processors. Can I join these nodes to the old cluster if I get the Nutanix AOS and VMware on the same versions as advised by you? Thanks again.

Yes, Nutanix will handle all that behind the scene with their magic sauce 😀