Windows 2012 to 2019 inplace upgrade?

Question

We have many servers running on Vmware mostly 2012. I am updating as many as we can to 2019. I'm finding some I can but others I cannot. When it works its fine but when it doesn't they start to ;load, reboot and just stall at the Windows Tile screen. In Vsphere I see they show 100% CPU. I can leave them for hours and they never finish. I make snapshots before this so I can just revert it back. On the ones that fail it wil let me update them to 2016 using the same process but even once on 2016 it won't go to 2019. These are all Virtual machines does any one know what I can check?

Answer 1

In-place upgrades can be problematic and are never recommended. Check that the health is confirmed 100%. Better / cleaner / much safer option is to stand up a new one, patch fully, migrate the roles over.

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Answer 2

I'd suggest starting a case here with product support.
https://support.serviceshub.microsoft.com/supportforbusiness

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Answer 3

@Komendat Jason
Hi， 
If in place upgrade really didn’t work as you said, may you provide info about the distinctions (version, drivers or settings, etc.) between the failed and the succeeded VMs so that we can do further research.
you can compare your procedure with the following links to find differences
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/upgrade/upgrade-2012r2-to-2019
Based on my knowledge. In place upgrade from 2012 to 2019 is not supported, rather we can do in-place upgrade from 2012 R2 to 2019, perhaps you omit R2 in your description.
Overview of Windows Server upgrades.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/upgrade/upgrade-overview
Otherwise, usually we advocate clients to do clean install, upgrading their servers to latest version. Back up data first and migrate back to new server 2019 which is the most efficient method.
You can refer to the following links for details.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started-19/install-upgrade-migrate-19

Hope above information can help you.

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Answer 4

I found it, VM H/W compatibility level