Hello Dan,   You can safely go from 5.2.5 to 6.0.11 then onto 7.1.5.   Since this is VMware and you are not already at 6.0.6-H2 or greater it is recommended to take a maintenance window for this upgrade.  So both the VMs and ESXi nodes should be down.   Regards, 
Hi , apparently i need to upgrade the firmware on my production storage environment to 7.x  the upgrade path matrix says 5.2.5 can go up to 6.05 , then from 6.05 i can go to 7.x the EQL firmware upgrade adviser tool says recommended 6.0.11  so conflicting information here  can i go directly from 5.2.5 to 6.0.11 ?  or should i follow the upgrade path document if im actually looking at the most current document i came across a lot of them  also any recommendations would be helpful on  should i take the hosts offline before  the upgrade ? with the current running firmware " read a couple of KBs and some awesome experiences about vmfs may get corrupt in a way or another with any firmware version below 6.06-H2. after doing firmware upgrade  thanks  
Firmware Upgrade Path