Restoring backup to a new server hardware

[eddyy]

Hi

I am trying to do restore and backup to a new server hardware. The current restore backup is for Server 2016 and the new hardware doesn't support Server 2016 and it supports Server 2019 and beyond.
I have failed the restore many times and I just would like to check here anyway to kind of get a confirmation that I can't do it if the new hardware doesn't support the OS.

Thanks for your help.

[HannesK]

Hello,
You can install Server 2019 or newer and then restore the the data.

Bare metal recovery does not work if Microsoft does not support the new hardware (I guess that was the question?).

Best regards,
Hannes

[BackupBytesTim]

If needed as a workaround, you could probably do a basic Hyper-V installation on your new server, that is, install Server 2019 normally, and set up only the minimum required Hyper-V roles and features. Then create a virtual machine to recover your Server 2016 backup to. Then within your virtual machine, upgrade to Server 2019 and do a backup of that. Verify all your functionality is good with the 2019 upgrade before doing your backup. Then you can wipe the server and recover your 2019 virtual machine backup directly to the server as a bare metal restore. You may need to account for any hardware specific drivers, but in my experience Windows will probably have enough to boot and connect to the internet, so running Windows Update after the final restore should locate and install any other missing drivers.

That's what I would do in your situation, obviously it's not necessarily the cleanest solution. If you have the original hardware that ran the 2016 version, I'd definitely go for trying the upgrade to 2019 there first.