Unable to clone an Edge Transport server configuration

I just ran into an interesting issue the other day where we tried to clone configuration from one Edge Transport server to a new server and wanted to share my experience.

Typically this is a relatively straightforward process, and the following link details the Import & Export scripts you would run to perform this process: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996008.aspx

We exported the configuration from the Source Edge server using a variation of the following command:

./ExportEdgeConfig -CloneConfigData:"C:\CloneConfigData.xml"

Then we copied the XML file to the TARGET Edge server and validated the configuration file & created an answer file with a variation of the following command:

./ImportEdgeConfig -CloneConfigData:"C:\CloneConfigData.xml" -IsImport $false -CloneConfigAnswer:"C:\CloneConfigAnswer.xml"  

Finally we attempted to import the configuration file to the TARGET Edge server with a variation of the following command:

./ImportEdgeConfig -CloneConfigData:"C:\CloneConfigData.xml" -IsImport $true -CloneConfigAnswer:"C:\CloneConfigAnswer.xml"

We received the following error:  Error: "Validation Failed for Fqdn element of type FQDN"

As it turned out we didn't save the CloneConfigAnswer.xml after modifying the last of the invalid settings.  Thus the FQDN in the CloneConfigAnswer.xml was reflecting the source Edge Transport server and not the target Edge Transport server. Thus it fails the FQDN Validation step of the cloning process. 

Validation errors are usually due to problems with the CloneConfigAnswer.xml file, I had just never actually received an error during the Validation step before.  At least the fix was straightforward, as we updated the FQDN in the CloneConfigAnswer.xml to reflect the FQDN of the target Edge Transport server that
the configuration was being copied to and then we were able to successfully clone the Edge Transport configuration.

~Craig