Can I apply a snapshot taken in 6.7 to a clone on 8.0

[iCulver]

Hi all,

   I'll try to keep this straight forward and simple, I'm not usually good at that. My question is: Can I do this?

• 3 older servers running vSphere Hypervisor 6.7
• 2 new servers coming in, plan to install vSphere 8 on them and add to farm
• Would like to clone "Big Important Server" from old farm to new, server is 1.2TB in size
  • Take snapshot of BIS
  • Shutdown BIS, create clone, startup server (need to minimize downtime)
  • Copy clone over to new server
  • Shutdown BIS, copy snapshot over to new server
  • Apply snapshot to BIS clone and then boot
• In theory this should allow us to move the server from the old 6.7 farm to the new 8.0 farm with minimal data loss/downtime, right?

   I have a feeling this won't work, that snapshots taken in 6.7 will be incompatible with 8.0. I wouldn't be surprised. But I figured I'd ask since the alternative is simply bring down the BIS, clone it, copy it over, and bring it back up. Which sounds simple, but we're talking a server that's 1.2TB in used space, it's going to take a long time to clone and then copy. I've been told that's not great.

    So, if anyone knows if this will work, if it should work, if you've done it, or any suggested alternatives would be cool too, many thanks ahead of time!

Cheers,

Isaac

[maksym007]

no,  this is ridiculous. 

Install second vCenter and play as you wish.

[a_p_]

I'm afraid that this will not work that easy, and may depend on the snapshot format (delta vs. sesparse).

Question: Are the hosts managed by vCenter Server, and which vSphere Edition is in use?

André

[iCulver]

Right now the whole stack (3 servers) is all 6.7. The hypervisors, the vCenter server. We'll be adding a pair of new physical servers to the stack and putting vSphere 8 on them both, 2 hypervisors and a vCenter. Hopefully we can just add the 3 6.7 servers to vCenter 8 and start transferring servers over without much trouble.

I was just trying to find a way to minimize the downtime, since copying the 1.2TB server over to one of the new servers will take a decent chunk of time, I'm sure. Last time I had to clone and copy it between servers I think it took at least a few hours. I suspect that we'll just have to eat the downtime and hope we don't get any or too many orders during that time.