In order to help prioritize our development, please let us know if anything on this page is a barrier to using SQL Clone.

Current known limitations of SQL Clone

• The source of an image cannot:
  • Be a SQL Server database snapshot.
  • Be a database which is standby or in recovery.
  • Be a live database currently part of a failover cluster.
    • Images can be created using backups of such a database but the backups will have to be restored to a SQL Server instance that is not part of a failover cluster.
    • Images can be created from availability groups.
  • Be a live database stored on a partition that is larger than 64 TB.
  • Be a live database whose data files (usually mdf/ldf/ndf) are stored on a different machine to its instance.

• Clones cannot be created into failover clusters or availability groups, or inside containers.

• Clones cannot be created on a SQL Server with an earlier version than where the image was created (later version is fine).

• CLR assemblies are not ported to other machines by SQL Clone. These may have to be registered in a post-clone step if they are required.

• The size of database within an image or clone cannot be larger than:
  • 1.8 TB on agents running Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2
  • 64 TB on agents running Windows 8 / Server 2012 or later

Known issues

• Progress indications for creating images from Redgate SQL Backup files may pause during restoration of the log files.
• Progress indications for creating images from very large live databases are inaccurate.
• When creating an image from a multi-database backup, only the first database within the backup will be imaged.

Untested scenarios

• Running under a group managed service account.