Hi,
I have bought the backup software today so please pardon me if my question is already answered in any FAQ etc.
I have two win 2003 standard servers. One of them is source and it have all web sites, softwares installed and the other one has windows 2003 installed.
I want to move all files of my web sites, IIS, installed softwares, emails, configurations, users etc. to the new server but I dont want to move windows itself. Because two server have different windows licences then I dont want to create full image of the source server.
In the situation above which folders should I choose and please let me know which settings should I use ?
Thanks in advance
hosting server moves
Possible solutions
There may be a problem with what you suggest because program installations update the registry and many install files to the Windows system folders. Even if you identified the file differences the registry updates would be extremely difficult t get in step.
I guess you want to set-up a standby server to hot swap in the event of a complete system failure. If both PC’s are hardware compatible then you could use the disk to disk copy option of AISBackup to clone 1 PC to the other, but do not boot from this copy on the second PC, except for a test to ensure everything works okay. When you boot the clone on the second PC Windows will probably complain that the hardware has changed and you will have to re-register. There is an option at this time to re-enter the product key of the second copy of Windows Server 2003 instead of the backup version. Other products such as Exchange Server will probably also need to be re-registered. Am no expert with this but I am sure Microsoft will le you know what needs to be done in a disaster recovery situation.
Another option is to set-up the second Server as a clone of the live server minus the data files (web-site etc). The web-site data could then be copied over to the second PC (HTML files etc). You may have to do some research to get everything working as you want.
You could also use AISBackup’s normal backup option to backup the live server to the second server. Unless you are very unlucky most hardware failures on the live server would be easily fixed by using components from the second server. If you did use the clone option then the disk from the second PC could be installed in the live PC and there will be no need to re-register with Microsoft. Actually I would advise that purchase a FireWire or USB disk caddy, a disk, and clone everything directly to this rather than the other server, see a tutorial here:
http://www.aiscl.co.uk/USBDR1.htm
I would not automate the cloning of the operating system disk as if there are software problems (virus, ad-ware etc) they too will be cloned. Instead manually clone the disk when you know everything is okay and schedule automatic using AISBackup’s proper backup options. It does not matter if you backup bad data using AISBackup because it is easy to select a previous backup session date for restore.
If possible try the suggestions and backup / restore options before you really need to use them.
Barry
I guess you want to set-up a standby server to hot swap in the event of a complete system failure. If both PC’s are hardware compatible then you could use the disk to disk copy option of AISBackup to clone 1 PC to the other, but do not boot from this copy on the second PC, except for a test to ensure everything works okay. When you boot the clone on the second PC Windows will probably complain that the hardware has changed and you will have to re-register. There is an option at this time to re-enter the product key of the second copy of Windows Server 2003 instead of the backup version. Other products such as Exchange Server will probably also need to be re-registered. Am no expert with this but I am sure Microsoft will le you know what needs to be done in a disaster recovery situation.
Another option is to set-up the second Server as a clone of the live server minus the data files (web-site etc). The web-site data could then be copied over to the second PC (HTML files etc). You may have to do some research to get everything working as you want.
You could also use AISBackup’s normal backup option to backup the live server to the second server. Unless you are very unlucky most hardware failures on the live server would be easily fixed by using components from the second server. If you did use the clone option then the disk from the second PC could be installed in the live PC and there will be no need to re-register with Microsoft. Actually I would advise that purchase a FireWire or USB disk caddy, a disk, and clone everything directly to this rather than the other server, see a tutorial here:
http://www.aiscl.co.uk/USBDR1.htm
I would not automate the cloning of the operating system disk as if there are software problems (virus, ad-ware etc) they too will be cloned. Instead manually clone the disk when you know everything is okay and schedule automatic using AISBackup’s proper backup options. It does not matter if you backup bad data using AISBackup because it is easy to select a previous backup session date for restore.
If possible try the suggestions and backup / restore options before you really need to use them.
Barry