Cloning FreePBX servers in VmWare

So recently we have been moving our virtual workloads from VSphere 5.5 to 6.7 on new servers/SAN. The process has been pretty smooth, but we’ve had to convert our VMs so the process usually goes shut down VM, use VmWare’s standalone converter, and power VM back on in new VCenter. Although this has worked for a lot of our customers by doing the work after hours, one of our customers is a 24/7 operation and we need to keep their phones up and running.
They have their own FreePBX server and I though about cloning it, and then converting the clone over to the new VCenter, and then just switching some IP/Networks around so that the phones point to the new PBX. This is all well and good in theory since I believe the only files that might be different between the old server and the new are the voicemails.
When I try this, I can get my new FreePBX VM up and running, however, I can’t browse to the gui which gives me the following errors:

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When I try to restart freepbx with the amportal restart command I get the following errors as well:

Has anyone seen this behavior? Thanks.

The correct way to do this is to use the conversion tool - you build a NEW VM, use https://convert.freepbx.org to copy everything from the old machine to the new machine, and then when you’re happy with the new machine, you simply swap the IP addresses over and enable the trunks.

Thanks, but I already know that is what you’re supposed to do. However we can’t do that in this situation

Uh.

That’s exactly what I’m suggesting you do, but encouraging you just use the tool that is designed to do exactly that.

I see, sorry I missed the part on your post about using the freepbx conversion tool… Wow I didn’t even know that it existed that is awesome. I will test today and see if we can get it going, thanks a lot!

Our QA team is testing restoring Backups from 12+ in to 15. FreePBX 15 is on the cusp of beta but when released the backup module should generally accept any backup 12+. I think officially 13+ but it should make things like this trivial

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Is there any timeline for the release of this version?

That’s some good news! Thank you guys.

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