Windows Server Downgrade
I work at a school district, and we are trying to find a way to downgrade our Servers. We recently upgraded to Windows Server 2012R2, and want to find a way to go back down to Windows Server 2008R2. This is just a backup option incase things don't go well with the new one.
I was told there is some kind of command that you can use to accomplish this, but I am not too sure of what that would be.
Thanks in advance, Viraj
Solution 1:
There is no Windows built-in way to downgrade an installed OS version, except for uninstalling service packs. This is not your case, as you are asking for a significant major version rollback.
You may be able to downgrade functional levels of certain components, particularly after installing new servers with the older version - but definitely no way back for the entire OS short of re-install.
See MDMarra's answer as well for external ways to manage your image. Options include snapshotting VMs, dual booting, native-boot from VHDX, backup...
Solution 2:
This is not something that's built in to the OS installation.
Your two options are:
Use snapshotting at the hypervisor or storage layer if this server is a virtual machine. Roll back the snapshot on failure.
Take a full system backup that is capable of being used for a bare-metal restore. If the upgrade fails, restore from this backup.