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System imaging and bare metal restore

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  • 05-04-2018 1:20pm
    #1
    humaxf1
    Registered Users Posts: 865 ✭✭✭


    Hi all,

    Two servers I supplied to a client have been giving grief no-end with sudden shutdowns. With numerous hardware changes by the manufacturer and countless hours of troubleshooting, the symptoms have not been resolved.

    There is a chance replacement servers from a different family/line of servers will be supplied and if I would gladly try to avoid starting from scratch with;

    current AD server backup
    installation of server 2012 x2
    configure AD on one, RDP on the other
    restore server data and create user accounts
    backup close to 30 profiles
    etc
    etc
    etc

    Anyway, I'm thinking of taking a complete system image of both servers and restoring these images to the new servers which will naturally be a change of hardware, drivers and so on.

    Any suggestions of software to do the job will be appreciated and it must be capable of restoring to dis-similar hardware (HP to IBM for e.g.) or bare-metal which I believe is the buzz word for such an operation.

    Thanks in advance


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    #2
    ED E
    Registered Users Posts: 36,165 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    Post W7 windows is pretty good at handling underlying hardware changes without totally falling over. There's a decent chance that moving a system image from the Server Backup util will go through fine as long as its not E5 to Itanium or something weird like that. Restore, reboot, pull drivers automagically, reboot - live.

    If you can run side by side for a few hours then I see no reason not to try. KISS and all.


  • Options
    #3
    rolion
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,362 ✭✭✭rolion


    What i will do is:
    take a full data backup,in file copy and with your backup software.
    run a system backup snapshot,for your Active Directory records
    reinstal fresh OS and give same name to server
    do an authoritative AD restore
    restore data and profiles (exact match of shares adn drives layout/maping)
    test
    close snag list.


  • Options
    #4
    tech
    Registered Users Posts: 2,801 ✭✭✭tech


    Acronis image with universal restore will sort you out.

    Other option is build your new server, join to Domain and transfer the FSMO roles. and shares


  • Options
    #5
    ressem
    Registered Users Posts: 2,426 ✭✭✭ressem


    The change of disk controller, if it's a parity RAID (0,5,10,50 or if unlucky one of the proprietary variants) is something to look out for with a cloned OS moving hardware.

    I'm sure the last thing you want is added complexity, but would vmware essentials be worth considering in your environment; placing ESXi on the new servers and using the Physical2Virtual migration assistant to transfer the systems?

    Then you would have flexibility to have a secondary clean DC on the other hardware as a fallback, if one falls down?

    And the windows servers would be communicating with widely tested vmware drivers, rather than the often less-tested drivers provided by hardware vendors.
    It might be easier to determine then; if windows crashes but ESXi stays up, then the windows rebuild is in order.
    Also simpler for Microsoft to diagnose, if you send the windows Core dump to Microsoft support. Or for you to replicate/troubleshoot on your environment.

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3106831/troubleshooting-stop-error-problems-for-it-pros


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