Replacement server... "Migrate" or use image to restore?

[dotobi]

Hey Everyone

There has been a fire at one of my clients' offices. Although it managed to stay contained in an area without any computers in, the entire office has been covered in soot. And obviously, the computers' and server's fans sucked the soot in and covered all the components in the stuff. Not so good as soot has a high carbon content and carbon is a great conductor...

So anyway... most of the computers are still functioning but we are having them replaced.

For the server, we use, amounst other things, Acronis Trues Image server to back it up, and as this claims to be able to restore a backup to another machine, I could in theory restore an image of the old server to the new server. But I am in the handy situation where the old server is still running so I could set up a fresh copy of SBS2003 on the new server, then 'migrate' everything over.

The migration option seems like the cleanest way of doing it as I would have a nice fresh install of SBS on the new machine.

So I guess my question here is would you agree? and has anyone attempted to restore to another machine using Acronis True Image server (9.1)?

Obviously the old and new servers' hardware specs are different, hence my concerns of restoring via image to the new server.

Thanks

 

[wahnula]

I agree with the migration scenario. BUT I would first do a light cleaning, then get at least two backups of the dirty machine (SBS backup & Acronis), then clean the dickens out of it, including whatever disassembly might be needed to properly clean it up.

If the machine fails during migration then at least you will have your choice of backup/restore options. Best of luck!

Tony

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