The source and target must be running the same DBMS/Operating System combination, (although users can run different patch/sp levels) in order to successfully provision a VDB to the target. For example, if the source is running SAP ASE 16, the target can be running ASE 16SP1. However, for ASE 15.7 the versions of the source and target should both be in the 15.7 SP100 to 15.7 SP140 or 15.7 ESD#1 to 15.7 SP64 ranges. There can be no mixing of versions between these two ranges. If the target is used as a staging server, the same rule applies (prior to Delphix 5.2.5.0, the staging server had to match the source server's version down to the SP level). The Operating System platform must be the same between the source and target, even when the operating system version may differ. For example, if the source is running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 x86_64 then the target could be running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 x86_64, but not Solaris 10 SPARC.

ASE itself may or may not allow the MOUNT command to work between versions. Be sure to check that the UNMOUNT and MOUNT commands work between your desired ASE versions.

So for example, if we upgraded the ASE staging instance to ASE 15.7 SP140 but we keep the ASE instance hosting the VDBs at ASE 15.7 SP135, we would want to make sure that we can UNMOUNT a database from ASE 15.7 SP140 and then MOUNT it on ASE 15.7 SP135:

isql -Usa -Psybase -SASE157SP140 
1> UNMOUNT DATABASE testdb to "/tmp/manifest"
2> GO

isql -Usa -Psybase -S ASE157SP135
1> MOUNT DATABASE testdb from "/tmp/manifest"
2> go
Msg 14580, Level 16, State 1:
Server 'ASE157SP135', Line 1:
You cannot mount the database(s) because at least one database contains functionality that is available only on the server on which it originated.

In the above example, ASE would not allow the database "testdb" to be mounted on the older release of ASE.