How to duplicate a Hyper-V VM to do a test run on upgrading its OS

Question

Hi everyone,

Hope you are doing well. I am new to Hyper V as my new work place supports instead of VMWare.

What the original IT person did was to setup replication to a different host for redundancy purpose.

Now I have a vm running 2012r2 with sql 2014 and want to upgrade its OS to at least 2019 with up-to-date SQL server on it. I would like to do a test on the OS upgrade first and I am thinking of "duplicating" the VM and disconnect the "cloned" off the network to do the test upgrade. May I ask how to do this with Hyper-V? May you share your ideas or experience?

Thank you for your help in advance.

Takami Chiro

Answer 1

Hi @Takami Chiro ,

You can export the VM and import it as a clone. To export a VM, right-click the virtual machine and select Export in the Hyper-V Manager. Then click Import Virtual Machine from the Action menu in the Hyper-V Manager, specify the folder where the exported VM files are located and select the import type as Copy the virtual machine (create a new unique ID).

Please refer to this link for more details.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/deploy/export-and-import-virtual-machines

Best Regards,

Ian Xue

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