Hi,
I have a physical file server (windows 2003 Standard) that I cloned and turned into a virtual server. Now I have a physical file server and a duplicate virtual file server. The physical remains in production in our domain, while the duplicate virtual server is in its own private network waiting for the physical server to crash (if ever). The virtual file server has the same computer name and same IP address and same domain as the physical production server.
If the physical server crashes, how can I make the virtual duplicate file server connect to the domain correctly in place of the crashed physical server?
So basically I want to be able to unplug the physical server and plug in the virtual server and have everyone be able to connect to it no problem.
Thanks!
Jake
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I actually used Acronis to make a backup image of the file server then converted the (tib image) that acronis makes into a VMDK image for VMware server. Then I created a new virtual server from that vmdk image.
I tried once to disconnect the phsycal server and connect the virtual one but I was getting no access to the DC.
Any data change I use Acronis to layer on the changes from the most recent backup.
You had mentioned that the virtual file server is sitting in a private network all by itself. Did you change the network settings so it can communicate on the network?
Last resort which is not fun to do, but will work, is to reset the AD account for the server, take it out and put it back into the domain. Should keep all of your security settings on shares and ACLs.
You're going to have problems long term.
All windows systems have SIDs and machine account passwords that are automatically changed periodically. Once that password changes (I believe within 30 days) you'll have connection issues to that server.
I would suggest a different strategy - use two Virtual Servers connected to a SAN (I hope that's what you are using now. Configure the virtual server system to fail over between physical servers as necessary.
Unfortunately I do not have that option. No SAN. I am just using the free version of VMware Server.
All I want to do is have a clone of my physical file server ready incase it goes down and plug it in and have everything work no problem.
Is this impossible?If not please let me know the best way to do it.
Thanks!
EFHC - So lets assume he makes the image today... and the password is changed tomorrow... then what...? He could get lucky - the password may have changed 5 minutes before he cloned it... but maybe not.
My recommendation is if high availability is needed, do it right and get appropriate hardware and software. Otherwise, you're asking for far more headaches. Before you even try this, you should have TESTED this in a test environment... if you haven't, I suggest you stop and TEST FIRST.
Is resource utilization an issue? If not:
You could virtualize the primary server and let it run as a VM on the old machine, then you can make snapshots, back them up and fire the virtual machine up from another server if #1 goes down. You just need to make sure VMWare doesn't change the SID when you change HW.
I have used VMWare Workstation machines exensively and only had domain connect issues if I reverted to a really old snapshot. And even then rejoining the domain solved the issue.
But you are not taking about doing this to your enterpise Exchange server, right? (That's no 'file server')
no not an exchange server. I just added that for contrast. Although I have tried rejoining a domain with an exchange 2007 server in a lab environment before without any problems.
Its sounds like it should work as long as I keep the image up-to-date, but as leew said, this could be a factor. A very small one though. Rejoining the domain I guess would not be a problem as long as it is not an exchange server or what else?
Do you guys know of a better way to achieve the same result, other than spending a million $$$
?
Well the thorey is,
If one of our servers crashes we can switch to a virtual replica until we can restore the physical server again. So our users won't have to wait 8 hours or more to get access the server again. Personally I think there is a better way like with doubletake, but unfortunately we don't have the budget, so we gotta make due with what we got.
Justify it. How much money would the business lose in lost productivity and lost sales if the server was unavailable? for 8 hours. or however long the systems would be down. Large business don't just do it because they can - they do it because they realize that it's not worth losing $xxxxxx when they could spend $xxxx in "insurance" by having redundant systems.
I used to have to jury-rig things all the time - it was unpleasant and caused more problems than the benefits were worth most of the time.
Business Accounts
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by: EFHCPosted on 2008-08-12 at 15:05:26ID: 22217530
As long as this is an exact clone then you will just need to power on the VM and change the networking settings so that the VM is communicating on the same network as your physical server. The biggest problem you will have is the data that has changed. How are you overcoming this?
Because this is an exact clone it will have the same SID and network settings and name. Shouldn't be a problem, this is how you do a P2V.