It's definitely not required to create a new database. However, in our upgrade from 6.10.1 to 7.4.1, we are creating a whole new set of environments that we will migrate our automations over to one at a time. We'll have two parallel sets of environments for a little while, and it is a pretty big headache to do this. However, it is much safer. If we find something doesn't work right in 7.4.1, we can just let it keep running in 6.10.1 for a while until a developer figures out what to do with it.
If you don't have a separate set of servers and such, then I would say just back up the database and then go for the upgrade. You'll find some stuff breaks and you should be aware of those things by reading the release notes which has information about breaking changes and upgrade paths and things to be aware of.
Dave Morris, 3Ci at Southern Company
