I have a Vcenter server that has been on a 2008 (not R2) box for about 5 years now and has gone through several Vcenter version upgrades. My SQL Vcenter DB is on a dedicated DB server and all Vcenter services are on one Vcenter server. I'd like to update it to Server 2012, and preferably with a fresh windows install. It sounds like from the documentation that I can just build the new server and point it at my existing DB when installing Vcenter? Is that all there is to it? I'd really like to keep all my VM folders, permissions and performance data and not mess up my HA clusters.
Additionally, I'll be upgrading from Vcenter 5.1 to 5.5. Would that be better to do before or after migrating to the new 2012 Windows install?
Any advice or tips on how to perform this upgrade would be splendid.