How can I clone a physical server 1

[Theo2k]

Greetings,

I'm trying to clone a decommissioned physical server that has exchange 2003 installed. At this point exchange has been down for over 6 months and I just need to have a good copy of the server before I can re-purpose for other use.

Is there a software you all can recommend? I know Acronis have couple of different software packages options but I'm sure which one should I choose since I have exchange loaded. They have the (Acronis backup and recovery for windows server) and also the windows exchange server backup.

Any other recommendations are definitely welcomed.

Thanks,

Theo

 

[biglebowski]

Are you intending to clone ths to new hardware and then wipe the old server?

Things like Ghost etc will create an image of the server but if the new hardware is too different it won't start or you'll have blue screening issues.

There's plenty of vendors out there who offer exchange backup solutions, acronis is one of them. If you're just after a backup of exchange this would be your easiest option.

Are you running vmware in your environment, if so you could P2V the server and leave the VM shut down as a backup.

Biglebowskis Razor - with all things being equal if you still can't find the answer have a shave and go down the pub.

 

[goombawaho]

Ghost would be cheaper if you can find an older version of it, it supports Server 2003. With Acronis, you have to buy the more expensive version to support Server (I'll say this from my memory so not as confidently as I normally am when I say something).

If you have a raid controller, you could add in a second drive and mirror it over, though the risk is there to overwrite everything if you're not careful (i.e., cloning empty drive to data drive).

Here are questions/comments I have.
1. Exchange down 6 months. Why has no one been executed (fired) for this??? How did people live without email??
2. You must work for a "stress free" company if they lived without Exchange that long. Nice.
3. Cloning a server with a hard drive to put on the shelf is minimally useful IF YOU CAN'T put the hard drive into the original server that it was cloned from. Because of dissimilar hardware, it probably wouldn't be bootable. So, it would only be useful to you if you could slap it into the original server if you needed to reference something on it IN BOOTABLE form. Data (files) would still be available by browsing the hard drive as a slave from another PC.

 

[karlisi]

Clonezilla is one of the best cloning software, no cost, based on Linux.

===
Karlis
ECDL; MCSA

 

[sbcsu]

Yes clonezilla is very useful

 

[BobbyCam]

The best way to do this is to create a couple of VHD's that can then be fired up on a VM. Microsoft do a free tool called disk2vhd:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

you can then keep the resultant VHD's on a server/DVD/USB drive

Bobby

 

[biglebowski]

That's far from the best way and just requoting what I said with an inferior product.

Biglebowskis Razor - with all things being equal if you still can't find the answer have a shave and go down the pub.

 

[Theo2k]

Thank you everyone for your great posts! I was able to create VHD's using the Microsoft disk2vhd.