Copying an environment to another region
Copying an environment is a powerful action in Skytap. With just a few clicks, you can copy an entire, complex environment, including the VMs, networks, and environment settings. If you need to work with environments in multiple regions, you can easily copy the environment to each region.
Copied environments can be used as backups, as duplicates for continuous integration testing, or as modifiable versions that you can share with other users.
This article describes copying an environment to another region. To copy an environment to the same region, see Copying an environment.
After you’ve copied an environment, any changes made to the copied environment don’t affect the source environment. The source and copy are unlinked, separate resources.
Contents
Copying an environment to a different region
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Navigate to the Environment page.
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From the navigation bar, click Environments. Click the Environments tab.
- (Optional) Narrow or sort the list of environments using the filter, search, or sort options.
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Click the name of the environment.
The Environment Details page displays.
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- If the environment is running, click
to safely shut down all of the VMs in the environment. If you try to copy an environment without first shutting it down, either the copy operation will fail or the VMs in the new environment will be “crashed”. - Click Copy in the top toolbar.
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The Copy Environment window displays. Select the Destination Region from the list of regions enabled in your account.
The Destination Region list displays only those regions that support all of the features that this VM uses.
Optionally:
- Edit the Environment name.
- If the VMs are running or suspended, click Proceed anyway to acknowledge that the VMs in the new environment will be forcibly powered off. The power off action is equivalent to pulling the power supply from a running computer, and it may result in data corruption in the new environment.
- Select a Project for the new environment. For more information about projects, see Sharing resources with projects.
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Select Destination VPN(s) and/or Destination public IP(s).
- These options appear only if your environment uses VPNs or static public IP addresses.
- VPNs and static public IP addresses are regional resources that can’t be copied with the environment.
- If the new environment needs VPNs and/or static public IP addresses, select the VPNs and/or static public IPs you want to use in the destination region. If there are no available VPNs or static public IP addresses in the destination region, you can copy anyway and attach these resources later .
- Click Copy.
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The detail page for the new environment displays, but you can’t interact with it until the process is complete.
- If you leave the copy page or sign out of Skytap, the copy process continues automatically. Skytap sends you an email when the copy process is complete.
- Copying across regions can take a while. For more information, see What to expect when you copy an environment or template.
Changes to an environment during the copy process
Generally, a copied environment is a duplicate of the original. Almost all of the environment settings (notes, labels, etc.), VM settings (MAC addresses, hostnames, CPUs, storage, etc.), and network settings (network subnet, gateway IP address, etc.) remain the same.
There are only a few places where the copy differs from the original.
Setting
Change to copied environment
Published services
Skytap creates a new published service that maps the same internal port to an external port address in the new region.
For example:
Port 80 open at services-emea.skytap.com:24908
changes to:
Port 80 open at services-uscentral.skytap.com:14725
Sharing portals
Skytap creates sharing portals for the new environment with the same settings and new, unique access links.
VPN attachments and connections
VPNs are regional resources. If you don’t select a VPN mapping in the Copy settings, the network in the new environment isn’t attached or connected to a VPN. VPN mapping lets you replace the VPN in the source region with an available VPN in the destination region.
Public IPs
- Static public IPs: If you don’t select a public IP address mapping in the Copy settings, the VM in the new environment doesn’t have any attached static public IP addresses.
- Dynamic public IPs with DNS: Skytap automatically generates a new, unique domain name for the VM in the new environment. When the VM is run, Skytap automatically deploys an available public IP address
Connections to networks in other environments (ICNR)
Environment networks are regional resources. The network in the new environment isn’t connected to other networks in the account. To connect it to networks in the new region, see Networking between environments.
Power state
The VMs are in a powered off state, regardless of the VM power state in the source environment.
VM hardware version
When you copy a VM on hardware version 7, 8, or 9 to US-East-2, US-Central, EMEA, DE-Frankfurt-I-1, CAN-Toronto, AU-Sydney-I-1, or APAC-2, Skytap automatically upgrades the VM to hardware version 11. This ensures compatibility with the latest features in these data centers. To check the VM hardware version, see Checking VM hardware version.
Canceling a copy operation
To cancel the copy operation, click Delete on the right side of the progress bar.