Production upgrade from Test 2012 R2 CU7

Hello,

We have upgraded our test environment(AX 2012 R2 CU7) from AX 2012 FP. Now we need to upgrade our production environment to AX 2012 R2 CU7 as well.
Now in order to do the production upgraded we are planning to build a fresh AX 2012 R2 CU7 environment first and then migrating the upgraded model store and latest database backup from production system(which is right now at AX 2012 FP). This approach can reduce the down time as compare to the approach suggested by Microsoft(in upgrade guide) which says we should install/uninstall/upgrade various components(Database, AOS, client, debugger etc.) on the same production machine itself(i.e. during down time window)  and which increases the down time.

Please provide your valuable suggestions.

Thanks

Manoj Parashar