Question : How to migrate physical to virtual file server attached to SAN

We have a file server W2k3 running on Dell PE 1950 that's giving us problems and need to be replaced and thinking of virtualizing it.

It's attached to EMC CX300 that's 90% full, with 6 of 10TB used by this server. ESX 4 cluster is also attached to this SAN, using 3TB.

How would I go about bringing up new VM and attaching same 6TB of data with basically no free space on SAN? Or would it be much easier to simply replace PE1950 with another physical box?

Would appreciate your input.

Answer : How to migrate physical to virtual file server attached to SAN

That should work just fine.  Map the LUN to vmware with the same LUN ID and this way you'll have vmotion and HA.  

You'll need some downtime to migrate the current OS or create a new VM.  You should dismount the LUN from the physical server before mounting it to the ESX server to be used as a RDM

There are two types of RDMs, one virtual (which allows you to take vmware snaphshots) and physical (used for MSCS clusters) and is strictly for SAN control and SAN snapshots, etc..

If you're looking for a new SAN take a look at the Netapp, it will do deduplication and can act as your file server on the domain.