Non-Production instance for production use

[pauladams]

Hello,

One my clients is running a Fuji production instance. They realized that they are on a very old release and have a migration plan.

However, as the workflows are outdated and needs to be changed and also they believe the previous implementer has not done good implementation, they decided to do an afresh configuration/build of their ITSM and non-IT workflows/modules and are not upgrading their Fuji instance.

Here is the problem - like any other implementation of a SM tool, they have some challenges in consolidating their processes/workflows. However, there is a high pressure from the management/part of the organization to implement their new processes/workflows on a new system.

To re-mediate this and as an interim workaround, they are planning to implement the processes/workflows for which they have consensus on a non-production instance (test instance) and release it to the users. Which means they will have two different releases one on Fuji (real production) and one on Istanbul but the one on Istanbul will be a non-production/test instance used as a production one.

As far as my knowledge and learning go about instances, the major difference between a prod and non-prod instance is the High Availability and everything else is same.

I want to know from you experts if there are any issues, risks and other consequences of using a non-production instance for a real production use.

Thanks

Pa

[gauravchoudhury]

Hi Paul,

Once of the challenges I foresee is cloning of an instance.

"Production instances cannot be used as the target instance for a clone after the instance is live." - If you will consider a non-production instance for production then planning to manage the cloning of the instance would be a challenge.

A production instance can be a source for a clone, but if it were available as the target there is the possibility of cloning over your live, production system from development or pre-production. It will then make no sense at all to have your production system as a clone target.

[pauladams]

Thanks Gaurav for your response and reminding me that a Production instance cannot be a target for cloning.

I was thinking that a Production instance cannot be a target for cloning when you (self service) want to do the cloning through HI portal and ServiceNow support can help us clone a production/live instance from a sub-production instance. Is my assumption wrong?

My customer is not looking at retaining any data, config or whatever exists on their Fuji instance. They are pretty much fine to wipe everything out of it.

Also, can we restore a full backup of one instance onto another instance?

In case if cloning of the production/live instance is not possible, can't we Upgrade the Fuji (prod/live) to Istanbul and restore the backup of the test instance (which was being used as an iterim prod) onto it?

[bernyalvarado]

Hi Paul,

If that's the case, you can just zBoot your Production instance and have it upgraded to Istanbul. You can do all that by yourself through Hi, but you can also involve a Hi support engineer if you need help.

And i do believe you can take the image from a sub production instance and apply it to a Production one through Hi. I'm almost sure I had been engaged with at least one customer who did it and can't recall them saying that they were not successful on doing so.

My recommendation will be to open a Hi ticket. That way you can initiate the process and understand from first hand if it's truly possible these days

Thanks,

Berny

[pauladams]

Thanks Bernny bernyalvarado will try those options and get back to you.