Cloning a production instance

[miyu]

I believe that a clone of the production instance will be created at the time of instance upgrade.
At this time, will the data created in the production environment as well as the customizations in the production environment be cloned?
I do not want to clone data created in the production environment.

[Maik Skoddow]

Hi

your statement "I believe that a clone of the production instance will be created at the time of instance upgrade." is completely new to me.

Where did you read this?

Cloning and Upgrading are two different topics, which have nothing to do with each other

Kind regards
Maik

[miyu]

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/sandiego-release-notes/page/release-notes/upgrades/upgrades-plann...

The above checklists No. 20 and 30 .
Isn't it common practice to clone the production environment to the development environment when upgrading an instance?

[Maik Skoddow]

Hi

this is just a checklist you may follow, but you also can have your own approach. 

On my customer's instances I start upgrading on DEV, then followed by TEST and at the end PROD.

A clone may have some high risks, especially if you forget to include all required preservers.

Kind regards
Maik

[Arjun Ayyappan · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You may use clone excluders and preservers to filter the data which would be copied to target instance. Please refer the below link on how excluders and preservers behave during a clone.

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0717012

Regards,

Arjun