A discussion around cross-version restores arose in the 6 week for PM-2209. Cloud currently offers users the ability to restore a backup on a cluster that is exactly one binary version greater (e.g. 7.0 -> 8.0). This circumvents the regular upgrade procedure.

This process poses some risks. Starting a node on backed up data files is considered restoring from an unclean shutdown, and doing this on a different binary version may break some assumptions the server holds.

This ticket should investigate the risks associated with performing a cross-version restore, and outline them in a document.