Sharepoint 2013 restore question

Question

I have a backup of a web application created on a 2010 farm... can i restore that backup on a 2013 farm???
What I mean is will it work or fail without damaging anything???
Because somethings just say "It wont work", but some say like "while i was trying to do that i broke myself completally and now you have to format..."
I haven't tryed it myself yet because of this fear of breaking the enviroment and then reinstalling everything...
Can anyone help?

Answer 1

I cant say I've tried this. I would think it would fail as the version would be too far apart (even in deferred upgrade state)

I would do this from a VM with SP2010 installed. You can download one of the IW setups Microsoft has here if you don't have one:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-nz/download/details.aspx?id=27417

If the backup came from a farm with any updates after SP1, you'll need to get those installed on the VM. After that restore your WebApp to a dedicated database, then move that database to 2013.

I would immediately backup from the 2013 farm, and consider this your day 1 restore point (don't throw away your 2010 backups if you retention for a period longer than you have 2013 backups available).