Adma1
asked on
virtualized windows server clone
Hi,
I have the unfortunate job of mirroring/ cloning the virtualized servers currently setup. I haven't had a great deal of experience with cloning servers within a virtualised environment. However from what I can tell the servers are running VMWare server. We have 3 seperate virtulized instances of Windows server 2008 R2 running one the one server box (i.e. Mail server, terminal server and file server) and there are currently 4 x 72GB hard drives installed in server form a raid 5 setup. Also, from what I can tell the raid 5 is a software setup and we are now out space on these drives and need to migrate to larger drives. My plan of attack in order to handle this migration was to use a service such as 'Acronis' deployment manager or similar in order to clone and redeploy the image onto the new HDD's. However as mentioned I not to experienced with the above and also I am struggling to work out how I will configure the raid setup after the cloning/ deployment onto the new HDD's is complete?
If anyone has any advice tips to help point me in the right direction for a successful redeployment, it would be greatly appreciated if you could post those here.
Thanks in advance.
I have the unfortunate job of mirroring/ cloning the virtualized servers currently setup. I haven't had a great deal of experience with cloning servers within a virtualised environment. However from what I can tell the servers are running VMWare server. We have 3 seperate virtulized instances of Windows server 2008 R2 running one the one server box (i.e. Mail server, terminal server and file server) and there are currently 4 x 72GB hard drives installed in server form a raid 5 setup. Also, from what I can tell the raid 5 is a software setup and we are now out space on these drives and need to migrate to larger drives. My plan of attack in order to handle this migration was to use a service such as 'Acronis' deployment manager or similar in order to clone and redeploy the image onto the new HDD's. However as mentioned I not to experienced with the above and also I am struggling to work out how I will configure the raid setup after the cloning/ deployment onto the new HDD's is complete?
If anyone has any advice tips to help point me in the right direction for a successful redeployment, it would be greatly appreciated if you could post those here.
Thanks in advance.
SOLUTION
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Ok, I'm confused.
You need to upgrade the PHYSICAL storage on the VMWare Server, right? You're running ESXi, right?
So why not export the VMs, install new drives, reinstall (if necessary) ESXi, import the VMs, expand the drives. Why are you cloning anything?
You need to upgrade the PHYSICAL storage on the VMWare Server, right? You're running ESXi, right?
So why not export the VMs, install new drives, reinstall (if necessary) ESXi, import the VMs, expand the drives. Why are you cloning anything?
ASKER
Yes we are running VMWare 4.0.0 ESXi, just to clarify were exactly would I export the VM's to? i.e. can I export these to FTP? How would I go about recreating the raid?
The reason why I was thinking of cloning was in case anything went wrong with the migration or a HDD failed I could simply just temporarily plug in one of the existing drives and get on with things.
Sorry bout the stupid questions here I have just never done this before and dont want to stuff anything in the process.
The reason why I was thinking of cloning was in case anything went wrong with the migration or a HDD failed I could simply just temporarily plug in one of the existing drives and get on with things.
Sorry bout the stupid questions here I have just never done this before and dont want to stuff anything in the process.
Checkout my article if you do not have VMware vCenter, that has a CLONE option.
HOW TO: Clone or Copy a virtual machine in VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESX/ESXi 4.x or ESXi 5.0
if you do not have vCenter, follow the above, and remember to SYSPREP the servers after Copy/Clone.
HOW TO: Clone or Copy a virtual machine in VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESX/ESXi 4.x or ESXi 5.0
if you do not have vCenter, follow the above, and remember to SYSPREP the servers after Copy/Clone.
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You be able through VMware vSphere Client to browse the Datastore and to download local at you pc or another storage area the VMs images.
Regards
Regards
Sysprep'ing production servers is not supported.
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ASKER
Hi All,
Apologies for the delay with responding I have been away for sometime.
Thanks for the replies, hanccocka I have read through your tutorial and just to confirm I have understood your tutorial correctly, I can simply connect to the ESI server and copy/ clone each of the virtual machines, save these to a shared location i.e. our NAS and then dump the cloned image onto our new HDD's and once the image has been deployed on the new drives they will then just be plug and play.
Apologies for the delay with responding I have been away for sometime.
Thanks for the replies, hanccocka I have read through your tutorial and just to confirm I have understood your tutorial correctly, I can simply connect to the ESI server and copy/ clone each of the virtual machines, save these to a shared location i.e. our NAS and then dump the cloned image onto our new HDD's and once the image has been deployed on the new drives they will then just be plug and play.
That is correct.
ASKER
OK great, I have one last question,
I have a spare indetical server box to the one we are currenlty running used a as a cold spare. I connected the hard drives from the server we are currently using and plugged these intot he spare identical server and when , I logged into the VM ESXi server and manually started each of the virtual machines and the status appeared “connected” however I could not RDP into these machines and when looking at the VMware console each of the machines continued to go through their boot sequence i.e. “windows is loading files” would appear and then the machine would reboot and VM ware screen would appear”
Any ideas.
I have a spare indetical server box to the one we are currenlty running used a as a cold spare. I connected the hard drives from the server we are currently using and plugged these intot he spare identical server and when , I logged into the VM ESXi server and manually started each of the virtual machines and the status appeared “connected” however I could not RDP into these machines and when looking at the VMware console each of the machines continued to go through their boot sequence i.e. “windows is loading files” would appear and then the machine would reboot and VM ware screen would appear”
Any ideas.
That's another question, to work through, because it should not do that.
ASKER