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Migrating from one WHS to Another? RRS feed

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    I have an original HP 470EX.  I've never had a great experience with it, but love the concept of WHS and eliminating the stress and work from data loss.

    I realized a number of my problems were related to the servers lack of RAM (when I uninstall all the HP plugins it suddenly becomes close to usable), so I looked into the labor to swap out the RAM.  I finally decided that doing the ram upgrade and still having a mediocre CPU (by todays standards), and a smallish system drive that would be a royal pain to upgrade, wasn't appealing, so I took the plunge and got a HP 495EX.

    So now the question is what's the best plan to migrate from the old server to the new server?  I have backups on the old server but don't need to retain them (after I confirm that I have new good backups on the new server).  I have about 1T of data in shares on the old server I do need to move.

    1.  Turn off remote access and auto backups on Old Server. 
    2.  Install new server on LAN (give it a unique name and IP address).
    3.  Discovery.exe to have client connectors find the new server instead of the old one.
    4.  Set up auto backups, accounts, and  remote access on new Server.
    5.  Set up shared on want on new server (including place to put data migrated from old server shares)
    5.  Change router config to allow remote access ports on the new IP, and make sure new IP is permanent reserved.
    6.  Remote Desktop into New server, use windows explorer to open shares from Old server and copy all data from Old to New.
    7.  Verify everything on new server (keep both servers online for some period of time)
    8.  Install cool stuff on new server that wouldn't run well on old server :)
    9.  Decide what to do with Old server.  Leave it as fileshare and use synctoy to mirror shares on my active server?  Install some Linux build?

    Is that a reasonable plan?  Any obviously gotcha's?  From other posts it seems like I will be able to run both servers, as long as I know that my client connectors will only be linked to one server.

    Thanks for any advice!

    Jason
    Thursday, November 5, 2009 9:07 PM

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    I have an original HP 470EX.  I've never had a great experience with it, but love the concept of WHS and eliminating the stress and work from data loss.

    I realized a number of my problems were related to the servers lack of RAM (when I uninstall all the HP plugins it suddenly becomes close to usable), so I looked into the labor to swap out the RAM.  I finally decided that doing the ram upgrade and still having a mediocre CPU (by todays standards), and a smallish system drive that would be a royal pain to upgrade, wasn't appealing, so I took the plunge and got a HP 495EX.

    So now the question is what's the best plan to migrate from the old server to the new server?  I have backups on the old server but don't need to retain them (after I confirm that I have new good backups on the new server).  I have about 1T of data in shares on the old server I do need to move.

    1.  Turn off remote access and auto backups on Old Server. 
    2.  Install new server on LAN (give it a unique name and IP address).
    3.  Discovery.exe to have client connectors find the new server instead of the old one.
    4.  Set up auto backups, accounts, and  remote access on new Server.
    5.  Set up shared on want on new server (including place to put data migrated from old server shares)
    5.  Change router config to allow remote access ports on the new IP, and make sure new IP is permanent reserved.
    6.  Remote Desktop into New server, use windows explorer to open shares from Old server and copy all data from Old to New.
    7.  Verify everything on new server (keep both servers online for some period of time)
    8.  Install cool stuff on new server that wouldn't run well on old server :)
    9.  Decide what to do with Old server.  Leave it as fileshare and use synctoy to mirror shares on my active server?  Install some Linux build?

    Is that a reasonable plan?  Any obviously gotcha's?

    Sounds good.  Just realize that logging into the server desktop is unsupported.  Having said that, as long as you copy to the UNC path (\\server\[sharename]), you shouldn't have any issues.  Also, to be honest, I would recommend you seriously think about each and every add-in you want to install on your server and decide if it's worthwhile or not before installing it (instead of just installing anything and everything just because you can).  (If you want to mess with add-ins, use your old server for that.  Just realize that the response/delay factor will be because of the lack of RAM in the 470.)

    From other posts it seems like I will be able to run both servers, as long as I know that my client connectors will only be linked to one server.

    Thanks for any advice!

    Jason

    • Proposed as answer by kariya21Moderator Saturday, November 7, 2009 12:25 AM
    • Marked as answer by vbclown Saturday, November 7, 2009 11:27 PM
    Friday, November 6, 2009 2:36 AM
    Moderator

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  • Question
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    I have an original HP 470EX.  I've never had a great experience with it, but love the concept of WHS and eliminating the stress and work from data loss.

    I realized a number of my problems were related to the servers lack of RAM (when I uninstall all the HP plugins it suddenly becomes close to usable), so I looked into the labor to swap out the RAM.  I finally decided that doing the ram upgrade and still having a mediocre CPU (by todays standards), and a smallish system drive that would be a royal pain to upgrade, wasn't appealing, so I took the plunge and got a HP 495EX.

    So now the question is what's the best plan to migrate from the old server to the new server?  I have backups on the old server but don't need to retain them (after I confirm that I have new good backups on the new server).  I have about 1T of data in shares on the old server I do need to move.

    1.  Turn off remote access and auto backups on Old Server. 
    2.  Install new server on LAN (give it a unique name and IP address).
    3.  Discovery.exe to have client connectors find the new server instead of the old one.
    4.  Set up auto backups, accounts, and  remote access on new Server.
    5.  Set up shared on want on new server (including place to put data migrated from old server shares)
    5.  Change router config to allow remote access ports on the new IP, and make sure new IP is permanent reserved.
    6.  Remote Desktop into New server, use windows explorer to open shares from Old server and copy all data from Old to New.
    7.  Verify everything on new server (keep both servers online for some period of time)
    8.  Install cool stuff on new server that wouldn't run well on old server :)
    9.  Decide what to do with Old server.  Leave it as fileshare and use synctoy to mirror shares on my active server?  Install some Linux build?

    Is that a reasonable plan?  Any obviously gotcha's?

    Sounds good.  Just realize that logging into the server desktop is unsupported.  Having said that, as long as you copy to the UNC path (\\server\[sharename]), you shouldn't have any issues.  Also, to be honest, I would recommend you seriously think about each and every add-in you want to install on your server and decide if it's worthwhile or not before installing it (instead of just installing anything and everything just because you can).  (If you want to mess with add-ins, use your old server for that.  Just realize that the response/delay factor will be because of the lack of RAM in the 470.)

    From other posts it seems like I will be able to run both servers, as long as I know that my client connectors will only be linked to one server.

    Thanks for any advice!

    Jason

    • Proposed as answer by kariya21Moderator Saturday, November 7, 2009 12:25 AM
    • Marked as answer by vbclown Saturday, November 7, 2009 11:27 PM
    Friday, November 6, 2009 2:36 AM
    Moderator
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    If you have an external drive with enough capacity, you can also transfer the content of shared folders by using the server backup functionality in the console (only available, if you added a drive to the storage pool as backup drive).
    If you wish to copy the backup database with the client backups, you can do that with the Add-In WHS Backup Database Backup or manually.

    Best greetings from Germany
    Olaf
    Friday, November 6, 2009 8:54 AM
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    thanks.  All went smooth.

    To migrate the shares from old to new, I ended up:

    1.  Choosing a drive in the old server I wanted to permanently relocate to the new server.  (I had enough capacity on the old server, I could remove the drive from the old server).
    2.  Used OldServer console to remove drive "TransferDrive".
    3.  Used OldServer console to re-add "TransferDrive" as a back-up drive.
    4.  Used OldServer console to backup all desired shares to "TransferDrive"
    5.  Used OldServer console to remove drive "TransferDrive".
    6.  Physically moved "Transfer Drive" to NewServer
    7.  Installed SyncToy on NewServer and Echo'd shares from drive to NewShare on NewServer
    8.  Verified Echo by running a second "Test" SyncToy on same directory pairs
    9.  Used NewServer console to add and format "TransferDrive" to the storage pool on new server

    I probably could have added TransferDrive to NewServer as a backup drive w/o formating and restored Shares vs. using Synctoy but was afraid to try.

    NewServer is running great, BTW. 
    Saturday, November 7, 2009 11:32 PM
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    ...
    I probably could have added TransferDrive to NewServer as a backup drive w/o formating and restored Shares vs. using Synctoy but was afraid to try.
    ... 
    You could have, yes. :) And that would be the recommended method of moving files from one server to another.
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Monday, November 9, 2009 6:42 PM
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    Can someone explain to me what "Transfer Drive" functionality is?

    Thanks

    Max
    WHS_retail version
    Friday, November 13, 2009 9:32 PM
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    Can someone explain to me what "Transfer Drive" functionality is?

    Thanks

    Max
    WHS_retail version

    That's not a functionality.  That was the name of vbclown's drive.
    Friday, November 13, 2009 11:14 PM
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