refreshing Windows servers

Save yourself a lot of time finding and answering these question by going to www.sbsmigration.com and getting the corresponding toolkit.

SBS doesn't seem to be mentioned by the OP. Simply giving the computer the same name and IP address will not make it the same object to Active Directory. The SID makes sure of that. DNS CNAMES are good for this purpose. If you point your clients to the CNAME instead of the server's actual hostname, you can do whatever you want to the server, as long as the CNAME points to a valid host.

Toolkit originally targeted migration scenarios specific to SBS.  Offering now includes scenarios just for Windows - including migrating from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008.

Hi I would but what steps could I take to do it free. We dont currently have a budget to buy the toolkit. Thanks.

I would build the server up under another name, decomission the original server, then rename as desired.

Where does your data live?

How is the data on the USB drive accessed (over a share)? What type of security NTFS/Domain?

When you say "bring down the old server", does that mean drop it from the domain?

If so then when you bring up the new server and add to the domain with the same name as the old server then a new computer account will be created and the SID's will not matter.  You will need to recreate all the shares on the new server.

Is there data on the old server that has to be moved to a new server or is it all on the USB?

Where does your data live? I am doing multiple servers but the usb harddrive file server the data is on the USB drive.

How is the data on the USB drive accessed (over a share)? What type of security NTFS/Domain? It is on a share and uses NTFS permissions.

When you say "bring down the old server", does that mean drop it from the domain? Yes we need to decommission the server.

If so then when you bring up the new server and add to the domain with the same name as the old server then a new computer account will be created and the SID's will not matter.  You will need to recreate all the shares on the new server.

Is there data on the old server that has to be moved to a new server or is it all on the USB? Most of the servers do not need data but the server with the usb drive, the drive will need to be unplugged then plugged into new server. This will make it lose all its permissions.

Firebar: I can just name the new servers a different one on most of the servers but there are a few that it would be much easier to keep the name. Is it anywhere possible to bring a new server online with the same name and transfer SID to it somehow even if its hard to do?

For the record, only for the sake of discussion...and I'm not saying you should do it,....in fact I am saying don't do it,...but it is possible to write a SID from a previous machine to a different machine if it is Server2003 and older or if it is XP and older.   The small tool called NewSID will do it because it lets you pick a specific SID to apply rather than a random SID which is what you would normally do.

I don't think it is possible with Server2008, Vista, or WIn7.

But,...don't do it!!!,...I'm just stating that is can be done,...there are a lot of bad things that you aren't' supposed to do that can be done.

BTW, I would not keep any important data on just a USB drive that isn't protected by RAID AND good backups. Copy the data to an internal or external RAID array using robocopy. If you use the /sec switch, robocopy will grab the NTFS permissions.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/archive/2008/07/31/robocopy-mir-switch-mirroring-file-permissions.aspx