vmware vsphere - ESXi 5.5 + vCSA Upgrade

We are upgrading 4 hosts from ESXi 5 to 5.5
We are adding 4 more hosts with clean ESXi 5.5 installs
We are also upgrading our vCS 5 to the vCSA 5.5
Using Enterprise Plus Licensing

Issue: I am trying to figure out the best way to make this transition. Our 4 hosts are running about 100 VMs and the 4 hosts we are adding are clean slates.

This is what I am thinking... Please help me out guys

1. After the 4 new hosts are setup in the Data Center running clean ESXi 5.5 I will deploy the vCSA ovf and register the 4 hosts with the Linux based appliance.


2. Now I have 4 new ESXi 5.5 hosts registered and running with vCSA 5.5 but I still have my 4 old hosts with ESXi 5 and registered to the old WIndows vCS running about 100 VMs


3. At this point I am thinking of shutting down the VMs on my older 4 hosts and removing them from the Windows vCenter Server Inventory and simply registering them with the new vCSA


4. Will all my VMs be transferred over with the hosts if I shut them down and put the hosts into maintenance mode????


5. Now I should have all 8 hosts registered with my new vCSA. But the original 4 hosts still need to be upgraded to ESXi 5.5


6. Move the 100 VMs to the new 4 hosts running ESXi 5.5 and upgrade the 4 older hosts.




7. Now I should have 8 hosts with ESXi 5.5 using the vCSA

   
   
   
   
   
   • Do I need the host running my Domain Controller to be the one vCSA is deployed to? Or do i need to deploy the vCSA without a hostname using DHCP so I don't need to map it to DNS with a static IP. Little confused on what to do about this upgrade regarding my DC. Please help.
   
   

Cheers!