tech advice and emotional support needed!

[mikeprice]

Oh - I'm being a wimp

 

But the last time I had to totally replace the disks in a server and restore from a backup was over 20 years ago

mind you that was on a system worth over a million quid and supporting over 5000 users and a whole business - but it was over 20 years ago

 

so

 

Our server is a farly old HP Proliant ML330 with 4 250 Gb disks in a Raid 0+1 array

and it's getting full (no big surprice)

 

obvious plan is to take all the current disks out - replace with 4 2TB disks and restore from the backup

The backup is a bare metal one - run every night

 

but I have never done this on windows before so I scared (OK i'm being a wimp - I may have said that before)

 

I also plan to get another server running on the system as backup but that is next on the list

 

so 2 questions

1) is the plan as easy as it looks

2) what kind of disks should I get (HP array config utility says the current ones are 250GB SATA) - make model - any to avoid??

3) how do I run a full restore when I have blank disks - or do I load sever 2008 and then run the restore

 

Thanks

 

Mike (being a wimp)

[HPlum78]

What is this server doing? and what do you use for a backup solution? I have just done this on a few servers as they don't like taking a bath by all account (who would have known!) It's not such a massive deal, I would be tempted to test a bare metal restore if possible and mark up the disks when you take them out just in case you need to put them back! as for disks on that server I could not tell you without looking in to it.

[mikeprice]

It is all fairly basic - dhcp, dns, print server, AD (although as it is a Primary school the AD doesn't use much resources

Main thing that the users see is that is is used as a central file server - which is the part that is taking up the disk space

 

processor, memory and disk usage is well within its ability so we don't need more power

 

Mike

[3s-gtech]

You will want multiple restoration options, IMO. I would take an image of the server, if possible (I've done this before onto an external USB disk). The RAID controller in older servers will often have a driver built in to many bootable imaging utilities.

 

It will pay to also have a file backup too, in case you can't restore the server itself but you can still retrieve the files quickly and easily.

[Sagima]

As it's your (only?) ad server I'd probably opt for the bare metal restore but as it appears to be your only server I'm guessing you might not have that as an option.

 

Take a file backup and system state backup to hand as well incase you do need to go the route of installing the OS first. You might want to familiarise yourself with backing up and authoritatively restoring active directory though if you can't do a bare metal restore

[sted]

you may be able to get away with swapping the drives one by one and letting the raid hardware rebuild the array to bigger disks then just expand the partition sizes in disk manager without any down time

[Joanne]

you may be able to get away with swapping the drives one by one and letting the raid hardware rebuild the array to bigger disks then just expand the partition sizes in disk manager without any down time

 

^ this.

 

I personally would back up all the data and start from scratch!! (but then my school is a primary and machines are easily re-imaged and re-added to the domain!) I'd kill to start with a clean server.

Edited April 29, 2016 by Joanne

[mikeprice]

you may be able to get away with swapping the drives one by one and letting the raid hardware rebuild the array to bigger disks then just expand the partition sizes in disk manager without any down time

 

hmm - would this work - if I replaced a 256Gb disk with a bigger disk would the RAID 0+1 system accept it?

or is this specific to different raid systems?

[Sagima]

I have swapped bigger disks into a raid array before (raid5 though not a raid0+1) and different speed disks (that was with raid 1).

It should work as long as your controller is happy with 2TB disks - you should do the backup and everything first though

[sted]

hmm - would this work - if I replaced a 256Gb disk with a bigger disk would the RAID 0+1 system accept it?

or is this specific to different raid systems?

depends on raid card but ive expanded hp raid systems hat way before. you may have to go into raid software and alter settings but it should recognize the extra space but it should work