Emsdad

Hi all...I have an old xpenology system running DSM 5.2-5967 on a standalone esxi host. I've read through this thread and the tutorial on migrating from 5.2 to 6.1, but I'm so very confused on how to actually perform a migration on esxi. I have data and modules I'd like to preserve if at all possible, so I don't want to make a new VM and start from scratch. Is it possible to migrate? Sorry for the noob question!