Moving Sharepoint from test server to new hardware

[BatchFile]

I'm approaching my wit's end with this one, so need a little input.

 

Some time ago, I set up a sharepoint server initially to host the head's shared diary (and mine, plus some teachers who have asked question that can best be solved sharepointilly) but to provide us with a handy facility to expand to other things later, on some "test hardware" (read "old PC from a classroom") and it's been working fine, doing exactly what I wanted it too:cool:. I therefore need to move it to its proper server hardware, so that it's quicker, robust and the Head's PA can stop making paper backups.

 

For my peace of mind, it's connected straight to an outward facing IP, is its own DC (in its own domain and forest) etc and has no connection, physical or otherwise to the rest of the network; all connections to it go out onto the internet and back in through that IP. It's Sharepoint 2010 and SQL Express 2008 R2 running on Server 2008 R2.

 

I had (naively) hoped to simply ghost it and do an in place upgrade to repair Windows, add any drivers then plug it in to the same port and away we go... Except that for some bizzare reason you can't do an in place upgrade of Server 2008R2 (or Windows7 come to that) unless you can boot it:rolleyes: (IMHO the biggest clanger M$ have ever dropped - and that's saying something - the main reason you'd want to do one is because you can't!). The recovery options on the CD don't help either. I've also tried sysprepping it (having first deployed the ghost image on a similar PC) but that fails too, probably due to driver issues on the server RAID, though I don't see why it would as Server 2008R2 can be installed on it without any extra drivers.

 

So to plan B: set up the new server as identically as possible and tried to restore a sharepoint backup into it. I've got Windows, SQL and Sharepoint installed, but the restore fails too and I can't make head nor tail of the logfile (attached)sprestore.zip

 

If anyone can shed any light on any of this it will help - What's the correct procedure for moving a sharepoint to a different server? What's going wrong according to the logfile? Any educated guesses at why?

 

Thanks all:)

[jamesfed]

Why not just turn it into a virtual machine?

[BatchFile]

Why not just turn it into a virtual machine?

That could work and it's something I was thinking but I'd discounted as I wanted to keep the physical seperation... but I guess I could make the new server the host and put the image in a VM on it... I'll give it a shot and report back

[jamesfed]

You could setup a NIC on your virtual host that goes directly out to the web (if that’s still the option you want to go for) - as the host and the VM can't communicate then there would never be any traffic from it reaching your internal network (without going via the web).