Need some other opinions on how to do this ... ?

[mikkydoos]

Hey all,

 

In the summer I'm looking at an upgrade.

 

File server: Win Server 2008

OS: RAID 1 array

Data: RAID 5 array - 8 disks - (I know. Don't mention it. I might be able to RAID 10 this at the same time.)

 

I want to upgrade the OS to Server 2012 so I can use it as a virtual SAN to implement a second VMWare host - I need shared storage for that.

 

IMO an in-place upgrade is just going to destroy the OS so a wipe down is needed I reckon.

 

 

If I wipe the OS, how do I maintain all the shares and permissions on the data without having to re-create the shares.

 

 

If I xcopy the data to a NAS, or restore a backup, will the shares/perms appear to the new OS. The perms will, what about the shares.

 

It can't be as simple as it just will - surely.

 

 

Hhhhmmm.

 

 

 

Cheers in advance

Edited May 11, 2016 by mikkydoos

[SHimmer45]

you can export the permissions to a text file using icalcs this can then be reimported back if needed.

or you could join a machine to the domain and copy all the data to that the permissions will "follow" the files

[mikkydoos]

you can export the permissions to a text file using icalcs this can then be reimported back if needed.

or you could join a machine to the domain and copy all the data to that the permissions will "follow" the files

 

What about the shares. There's lots of them !

[SHimmer45]

registry key

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askds/2008/11/24/how-to-back-up-and-restore-ntfs-and-share-permissions/

[Fazza]

IMO an in-place upgrade is just going to destroy the OS so a wipe down is needed I reckon.

 

If this was true Microsoft would have gone out of business years ago as thousands of companies around the world would sue them for breaking their servers!

 

We've never had any issues upgrading the OS on any of our servers (both Virtual and Physical).

[Sagima]

Once you've done the backup, os install and file/share restore it will make a nice entry in your DR documentation

 

But as the above has said - you can just upgrade the OS it won;t cause you any issues as long as it's not running exchange or something like that.

[mikkydoos]

If this was true Microsoft would have gone out of business years ago as thousands of companies around the world would sue them for breaking their servers!

 

We've never had any issues upgrading the OS on any of our servers (both Virtual and Physical).

 

 

 

I'll give it a blast.

 

Mines a Guinness if it breaks !!!!!

[Fazza]

Mines a Guinness if it breaks !!!!!

 

lol - you'll be fine.

 

As with anything like this, just make sure your backups are working before you do anything! We have 2 main Hyper-V Hypervisors that have our most important Virtual Machines on them and we upgraded them from 2012 to 2012 R2 with no issues. We then upgraded the 2008R2 Virtual Machines on them to either 2012 or 2012R2 - all without any issues.

 

We also used the offline time to virtualise a couple of physical machines including an offline P2V of our first domain controller which was took forever so we were wondering if it was working but all went fine.

 

Good Luck and dont forget to let us know how you get on!