Physically moving disks

[goal]

Hi,

We need to perform a rebuild of one of our NT4 servers.

In order to minimise downtime and ensure that the rebuild is done to perfection, we plan to move services to a backup machine.

The ideal plan for this would be to move the current SCSI disks from the existing box to a backup box. However, there are certain hardware differences between the machine. The backup machine is a multiprocessor box (the live machine is uniprocessor). The backup machine also has subtle differences such as NIC, RAM.

Having never done this before I'm not sure how the O/S will take to being 'transplanted' to another box - does anyone have any experience of this? do you forsee any problems arising? or can anyone give advice on how best to go about it? Any help will be very much appreciated.

Thanks.
Andy.

 

[SteelDragon]

Ok, fisrt problem you will have is the Kernel. If it is in uniprocessor mode it may not even boot if there are two processors in the machine. If it does boot however, you will only be able to use one of the Processors. That may or may not be an issue. There is a way to "upgrade" a single processor installation to a dual, but in this case I'm not sure it would be worth the time and headache. As for the RAM, that does not matter... RAM is seen dynamically in NT the same as it is in 9X. You can add more, take away, and it will "see" the changes. The nic card... another proosible trouble spot, but yet easy to fix... remove the current nic card drivers and bindings, and then install the new nic card drivers and bindings, several reboots may be required but that is all you should have to do. If any other problems arise, as they usually do, just pot them here and I'll help you with whatever I can.

Good Luck,

SteelDragon