How to best migrate a server to new hardware

Solution 1:

I do this often using StorageCraft ShadowProtect IT Edition. You can load in all the drivers for the new system before booting it.

Sometimes I've had luck with installing the storage drivers before migrating, and then going from there.

Solution 2:

I'm going to be a wet blanket w/ my answer. If you can rebuild the machines, I think that would provide you the most stable "known quantity" environment. Unless the applications are such a huge time sink as to cause a "migration" to be a net win, I'd think that the time spent making the migration solution work well could eclipse the time just to rebuild by hand (and, besides, it's probably not a bad idea to use this as an opportunity to create or refresh the documentation of the configuration of these server computers).

To my mind, migrating a 3 y/o Windows installation means migrating a lot of old hotfix uninstall files, potentially garbage files and registry information, and a general "cruftiness". Unless you've done a really good job keeping these machines clean, there's probably some of that cruft that will migrate over.

OTOH, if you've got a particularly touchy application and this is a "known working" environment that's been highly tweaked you might see a net win in migration. I'd play devil's advocate and say that all that tweaking should be documented and reproducible. >smile<

I guess it comes down to how painful it is to rebuild the applications and transfer the data. The OS and drivers should be easy and a non-issue.