Software recommendations to copy/replicate a server set up on another box.

Would like product recommendations to copy an existing server and load that copy onto another box here at work. If have to purchase a product would not like a conflict with licensing and such. Would like to take the copying software to various IT contracting jobs.
Member_2_6498066Asked:
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JohnBusiness Consultant (Owner)Commented:
If you are contracting this out, why not just use Robocopy?  It comes on your server and a decent contractor will know how to use it. Free.
Shaun VermaakTechnical SpecialistCommented:
What do you want to copy? Data, server state, a clone of the server?
Member_2_6498066Author Commented:
Clone the server.
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JohnBusiness Consultant (Owner)Commented:
You can use Acronis for that.

https://www.acronis.com

Two cautions:
1. Make sure the server you are cloning does not have an OEM server license.
2. Make sure you are not cloning old problems better fixed by reinstalling. Very common.
David Johnson, CD, MVPRetiredCommented:
Acronis is a backup product and not really suited as an imaging solution.
To begin always create your master image in a virtual machine to eliminate any hardware dependencies
in this day and age machines should in most cases be in virtual machines.
for instance I have 2 servers that host between them 23 virtual machines. i can fail-over from one hardware server to the other, either planned with no downtime or unplanned with 5 minutes downtime. Veeam Backup and Replication

I do recommend using Microsoft Deployment toolkit and sometimes also use Desired Server Configuration (DSC)
This way I create one master thin image of each O/S in a virtual machine, checkpoint, sysprep and capture, remove checkpoint and shutdown every first Saturday after patch Tuesday (this takes about 24 hours), but is a start and forget process and is totally automated.
I have task sequences for all the server/client machines that I support and can add/remove/update applications as needed. i.e. non-microsoft     updated products that don't follow Windows Update rules.

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Member_2_6498066Author Commented:
Thank you one and all.
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