Re: moving entire server
From: SuperGumby [SBS MVP] (not_at_your.nellie)
Date: 11/05/04
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Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 10:20:54 +1100
I might have to ask the M&M's how I go about putting this on their site.
I recently did a test move from a white box to a Dell.
this is what I did
The white box mobo was a Tyan Thunder 2520 with a single PIII 6??, the Dell
PE 2400 has a pair of PIII 733's.
Different NIC's. 2 * Intel pro's vs 1 8255x and 1 HP NetServer
Different drive subsystems, the white box has a single drive on a 7889
adaptec, the 2400 is a PERC2 as well as having Adaptec 78xx series options.
As well as the SCSI boot drive the white box has an IDE drive we use for
various purposes. Keep in mind, this is a test system.
I was disappointed when Jan pointed out that every box I had available
basically had a 'serverworks' chipset. I really wanted to do this on boxes
as disparate as possible.
I used an Adaptec 1200a PCI RAID card to move things, hadn't previously
tested it in either box, wanted to live dangerously.
SO,
I threw the Adaptec card into the white box and started her up. Windows 2k3
loaded the HighPoint 370 driver exactly as expected. Shut her down and
connect a spare 80G IDE we had in the cupboard, restart, and the boring
stuff continues, the drive was available to W2k3. The drive had a previous
install of windows on it so I formatted it. (I may have avoided the problem
later mentioned if I'd just deleted the damned partition)
So now I have an SBS which also recognises the 1200a drives. Shut her down
and boot of the GHOST floppy.
I'm not yet sure whether the problem was due to resizing the partition
during the ghost or due to the order drives are detected by this system but
I disconnected the SCSI and... You see, this is where things get a little
interesting. She BSOD'd on restart.
When running SBS on the white box it boots (when told to in BIOS) from the
SCSI. However, as is normal IME, the IDE drive appears in Disk Management as
Drive0. The SCSI device is 'C:'. If we choose to boot from the IDE drive it
still appears first in DM but is now 'C:', the SCSI being D the CD E and the
2nd partition on the IDE being F.
The Adaptec card appears as a SCSI device.
I couldn't get the cow to boot for love of money, then I had an idea.
I reconnected the SCSI drive and booted off it. Went into Disk Manager and
assigned the IDE partitions to drive letters W and X. Deleted the partition
on the 1200a HDD and reghosted her. Disconnected the SCSI and rebooted
normally. I now had a bootable SBS on a drive connected to the 1200a.
SO, it's time to throw the 1200a card into the target system.
It had been suggested to me that the Dell may not allow the 1200a to be used
as boot device. That was proven wrong in short order. I didn't bother
testing I just disconnected every other bootable device except CD and
floppy.
She booted. Into DSRM, Directory Services Restore Mode, of course. You DON'T
want to try to start up normally until Windows recognises the hardware
changes.
This was the, to me, most surprising bit of all.
On the first reboot she suggested a single CPU and detected a few devices,
installed them automagically, no CD required.
Something I learned when moving '98 installs was that when Windows suggests
'I wanna restart' it's not always a good idea to do so, so when it had
installed a few devices, not installed others because the drivers weren't
available, and suggested 'I wanna restart' I said 'stuff you, get on with
the job'. More devices were installed and when it eventually settled down
and was settled for twenty minutes or so I restarted. I left her for 20min
because when I've done similar things before it has _sometimes_ taken a
while for changes to be recognised. I reckon I could have rebooted her
immediately, into DSRM, but have no proof.
Upon restart the system suggested an MPC HAL was loaded and running 2 CPU's,
still no CD anywhere near her, matter of fact no CD was ever asked for. And
we're back in DSRM again.
And restart, and DSRM, and nothing additional detected, there's this thing
called 'Base System something' in the device manager with a red cross
against it but everything else is OK. LET'S GO FOR BROKE AND RESTART HER
NORMALLY.
Ran the 'change server IP' wiz.
Ran the 'Connect to the Internet' wiz.
Restarted. All OK.
I know I can ghost the IDE to a RAID array on the PERC2, I don't need to
test this but it's a step which would be required.
The M&M's also have some notes at
http://www.smallbizserver.net/Default.aspx?tabid=99. Their advice is good.
As you can see from above I didn't follow it. Basically, I was being
contankerous, I was trying to make this as difficult as I could while doing
the bare minimum. This was a test system, if I was moving a production box
I'd do a bit more, particularly installing the loopback adapters as a
holding point for my IP config.
"Param R." <pr@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:uC4Zpr0wEHA.2016@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> Hi all, it looks like we have outgrown our current server hardware and
> will be needing to purchase a new server. It is a P-III 600 with 1 GB RAM
> and during peak hours it crawls! Is there an easy way to move the entire
> SBS system from 1 server to another? I really dont want to have to
> re-configure all client PCs etc etc. Could I ghost the hard drives and
> restore to the new server? We are running SBS 2003 Premium with Exchange
> SP1. We have 2 sets of Raid 5 drives. OS is installed on 1 set and
> Exchange on the other. The 2nd set are newer 72GB Hard Drives and I would
> like to re-use them in the new server if possible.
>
> Also, assuming this migration is possible and we do it, could we then use
> the older server as a cold standby server? Is there such a concept with
> SBS?
>
> Any help here is much appreciated.
>
> thanks,
> Param
>
- Next message: jc: "Re: Can't find the network path"
- Previous message: Jay: "Re: DNS resolution and RWW"
- In reply to: Param R.: "moving entire server"
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