ARS 6.5 to 6.8/6.9 upgrade

Hello,

I'm very new to ARS, and would appreciate any advice I can get regarding an upgrade I'm planning.

I currently have an ARS 6.5 infrastructure.  There are 2 admin servers (1 publisher / 1 subscriber), each with a configuration database and history database.  The SQL version is an early version of 2008.  Each server runs web interfaces.

My goal is to upgrade ARS to 6.8+, and land on 2 new servers, on a newer version of SQL 2008 R2, and turn off all the old infrastructure.  Also note that it will be very challenging to get/use any interim SQL servers at that "early version".

Is this a viable approach?:

1. Backup / restore the ARS 6.5 configuration database to the newer SQL infrastructure
2. Establish 6.8 on the new servers using the restored 6.5 configuration and history databases
3. Perform some testing on 6.8 for a time period.  At this point in time, both 6.5 and 6.8 are running parallel, and configuration changes would be frozen.  (I think this is ok?)
4. Get all users pointed to 6.8, migrate missed change history from 6.5 to 6.8 and turn off 6.5.

Any advice that can be offered is appreciated.

Thank you,

M