copycluster to a newer version

One of my customers successfully did a copycluster from from v8.1.1-6 to v9.1.1-0. I believe copycluster threw a warning about version differences but it proceeded to copy data. But then he had a couple of buddy projections that had different sort order and the target cluster failed to come up. He fixed this on the source cluster, reran copy cluster and the target db came up successfully. So yes, it is forward-compatible but at your own risk.

Along with the other prerequisites, make sure you are the source and target are the same architecture (ie in Enterprise mode).

Don't have experience in copying from the older 7.2.3 though.

I'm actually really surprised that worked. CopyCluster copies all the metadata as well, so that's quite interesting. I think the likelihood of it working from 7.2 to 9.2.x is very unlikely.

I should add, they should be able to just connect the two systems together, and do individual table copies. That should work just fine. It would just be more manual, but the copies with that option are generally pretty fast. If you need help setting that up, let me know.

I agree with @Vertica_Curtis. I am surpurised that worked. I would never trust a copy cluster between major Vertica versions in my production environment! The system tables have changes over the releases.

@Bryan_H - Per @Vertica_Curtis suggestion, run a ton of concurrent COPY FROM VERTICA commands. It works great.

The current documentation doesn't list a version restriction, save for the bit about upgrading pre-7.2 backups... though I see on Confluence that only N or N+1 major version backups will be supported, and even then only starting from 9.0
Customer has consultants helping with this already so I think they can do a little scripting work to make COPY FROM VERTICA (or even odb) do the job.
Is that script to copy users, groups, etc. out there too? I suspect we'll need that.

hmm, may consider a copy cluster between 7.2.3 and 7.2.3-cloud. thereafter immediately upgrade the target env

Hmm... So you guys telling me to go check with my customer to see if his data is all in tact? He performed this operation without really checking with us or Support (he's been a Vertica user since 2011) and I found out after an on-site visit. This happened almost 4 months ago and he hasn't really raised any noise about anything. I doubt he has his old cluster lying around too. Will be an interesting discussion... Lol! Will keep you posted!

Hi Lenoy, you're probably safe because according to Confluence, backups should work between "N+1" releases so 8.1 to 9.0 would seem to be supported. However, I'm inclined to agree that there were enough changes to catalog, metadata, and even mini-ROS format that 7.x to 9.x probably won't work without upgrading in a staging cluster.

@Bryan_H @Jim_Knicely @Vertica_Curtis, so from what I understand, after the copy cluster to a newer version was completed and when the target database was started up - Vertica detected it as a 'version upgrade' and then proceeds to update the catalog. So this, in essence, was akin to jumping from version v8.1.1 to v9.1.1 without following the upgrade path. And that would only bring whatever issues (if any) that comes with skipping intermediate versions during upgrades. Someone with experience can correct me.

But I agree, jumping from 7.x to 9.x wouldn't be ideal at all.