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BrettK1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

vRA 7.6 to 8.2 Migration - Truly non-destructive?

https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Automation/8.2/vrealize-automation-transition/GUID-39146D97-DED6...

The above states "After migration, your vRealize Automation 7 source content remains unchanged."

As I figured one of the best ways to see how things will really go is to just perform a test installation an migration.

Will the source vRA 7.6 deployment remain unaltered (except a few configuration changes necessary for the migration, which should have no end-user impact) and usable throughout the entire migration process?  Once finished, I could just nuke the test install and be in a much more comfortable place for the actual migration.  Anyone have experience with this?

Thanks!

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gradinka
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

well yes, 7x content is unaltered 🙂

qc4vmware
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I'm currently migrating between 7.5 and 7.6 and in my lab/dev and test/stage environments I actually have both versions up and running.  I have a very small inventory and I'm being careful not to modify any of the pre-migration items until after I power off the 7.5 instances.  Its been really nice being able to have both available to compare.  I'll obviously not have both active in tandem when I tackle prod but yeah... the migration makes copies of all the data and is completely separate.  This is one of the big benefits of doing a migration 🙂  Lots more up front work but so many benefits its worth it for a big move.  Not sure if a migration is still the only option for moving from 7.x to 8.x but you should be safe.  Obviously you'll want to attempt to freeze the source activity as much as possible so you don't end up with any overlap to clean up once you go for the real migration.

When I was doing my test migrations I had a few issues and like you mentioned I had to rollback the target, fix the cause of the failure, then remigrate.  So much easier than dealing with in place upgrades where those situations were much more nerve wracking.