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Upgrade + Migration vs. New Install

Hello,

I've inherited the SolarWinds system here at my company. I've only been here 6 months or so, and I've never used SolarWinds before this job.

We are SEVERAL versions behind on almost all of the components and I don't know if it is a better idea to start fresh, or go through the multi-multi-step upgrade process.

Also, I have only old hardware and no options to upgrade beyond what we have.

This is the current configuration:

Hardware

Dell PowerEdge R510 2x Xeon E5620 @ 2.4 GHz

16 GB RAM

C:\ 100GB

\ 600GB

Software

Windows 2008 R2

SQL Express 2008 (yeah, apparently they setup the evaluation and never moved it)

Orion Platform 2015.1.3

    NCM 7.2.2
     NPM 11.5.3
     NTA 4.1
     SAM 6.2.1
    IPAM 4.3.1

    WPM 2.2.1
     IVIM 2.1.1
     VNQM 4.2.3
     DPA 10.0
     QoE 2.0

I have available:

    Dell Poweredge R410 2x Xeon E5645 @ 2.4GHz
     32 GB RAM
     C:\     60GB

\ 500GB

HP ProLiant DL380 G8 Xeon E5-2620 @ 2GHz (single cpu)

32 GB RAM

C:\ 500GB

\ 6.4TB

Upgrade path:

In-place upgrade the OS 2008 R2 > 2012 R2 > 2016

Migrate the Database to one of the other servers. Probably the Dell R410.

Or...

Install SQL in the Dell R410

Install the latest versions of our products onto the HP and spend the time configuring it.

I honestly don't know what is involved in the configuration of monitoring, but I'll learn as I go.

What is the better long-run solution?
I normally would not do an in-place upgrade of a production server. My usual process is to replace the hardware and setup a new server, or move the VM to a new host. But even with VMs, I have never upgraded the OS, we always built a new server when we needed that serious an upgrade.