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This is the first time I will have performed an upgrade of this scale (moving all of our 2012 r2 VMs to 2022) and the Microsoft documentation I've read had details on in-place upgrades. I understand that there is not a path from 2012 r2--->2022, and the mix between "in-place good" and "in-place bad" makes me hesitant to do so.

I know how to create a new server, where I am looking for insight is how to migrate the data from the 2012 r2 servers to the fresh 2022 ones.

I see that there is the Windows Server backup tool, but I'm really interested in what more experienced admins would recommend to make this a good learning experience that is not as painful as it could be.

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As most of us with 2012R2 machines still in service are going through this right now since it goes End of Life in October 2023, I can give some pointers that have helped me.

Unless you absolutely need to use 2022 for a feature it only has, 2012R2 can be natively in-place upgraded to 2019 and works very well. From my testing, there isn't really a huge difference between 2019 and 2022.

The biggest thing you have to worry about when doing an in-place upgrade is the services running on the server.
A simple DNS/DHCP server? In-place upgrade it.
A print server? try an in-place upgrade but be wary of incompatible drivers for older printers.
The only time I've gotten into trouble is when I in-place upgrade a system that has some non-Microsoft legacy application. Even then, most have worked without issue and just took some testing/validating.

The other things to keep in mind (if possible):

  1. If you are using virtualization that allows machine snapshots, snapshot the machine before attempting an in-place upgrade of the OS. If it goes badly, in many cases you can simply roll back to the snapshot and re-approach
  2. Have good backups. You should always have a good back up of anything you plan to upgrade or just in general.

If you get too far along and need 2022, simply in-place upgrade in step. You can update 2012R2 to 2016/2019 and then immediately step it up to 2022. 2016/2019 to 2022 in-place upgrades are supported.

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  • Thank you for the suggestions! I'll run a test on a non-production VM, but I am concerned about some of the servers that run critical MES' and databases
    – Flat-Entry
    Jun 15 at 15:32
  • I don't like the snapshot method. I create a powered-off clone instead and upgrade the server after that. If there are no problems, just delete the clone. Waiting for a powered-off virtual machine's disk to copy is a lot less nerve racking than latency in a running production VM.
    – Spencer
    Aug 3 at 13:33

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