We are in the process of replacing our older ESXi 5.0 hosts that unable to be upgraded to ESXi 5.1 with new hardware that will support ESXi 5.1 and beyond. The existing hosts are members of a vCenter cluster and vCenter has been updated to the latest version. We have pre-installed ESXi 5.1 on the new hosts and tried to configure them to match the existing hosts' configurations, with the exception of the hostnames and management network IPs.
First, are we on the correct path to replace the existing hosts?
Second, what are the next steps that we would take?
We have read different posts that seem to follow the steps below, but want to make sure that our incenses are applied correctly, that we do not miss any major, or minor, steps for iSCSI, reusing the existing ESXi hosts' names and IPs, or anything else that will cause the replacement to fail.
1. vMotion VMs from existing host to another host
2. Remove the existing host from vCenter
3. Shut down existing host
4. Power on the new host
5. Add the new host to vCenter cluster
6. Apply necessary configuration changes
7. vMotion VMs to new host
8. Follow the same steps on the next new host
Are we missing any steps?