Hi,
should I understand that "clone" as Virtual Machine clone?
If that is the case, and considering this is just temporal, just for testing:
- is your middle tier is on a very separated VM server from the SAS compute and SAS Meta (meaning, no other effect than changing location of Middle tier)
- do you have single sign on on the web, or HTTPS/SSL on the web (meaning, no certificates)
If the answers are 1: yes, 2: no, then you could try to:
- of course, first a good backup/snapshot.
- stop all the SAS services on all the servers.
- do the clone
- then modify the host files on both servers, in order to "simulate" the dns resolving. Be careful with the ips and multicast addresses that might be stored on configuration files...
- start the SAS services again on the original SAS Metadata and Compute server, and in the cloned Middle tier.
Note: for the long run, please consider a complete re-deployment, even more than change hostnames. It would save you from lots of hear-attacks during server updates and maintenances.