P2V RM CC4 Server Infrastructure?

[LazyD]

Hi,

 

Have just started working for a school client that is on a load of old RM server hardware on a CC4 network. Some of the hardware is dying at the moment and all the servers are all physical.

 

What I would like to do is P2V all of them onto a couple of Server 2016 Hyper-V hosts, which will allow me to turn off at least 3 physicals and have a load of spare hardware parts which should keep things going for the next while until the school budget for a more significant move away from the RM infrastructure.

 

I have supported CC3 networks in the past (last time I did that was about 4 years ago), was never a fan of RM stuff but I hear CC4 is a bit better. Anyway we'll be getting rid of it eventually, virtualising now will enable things to be much more flexible later also. I work with Hyper-V and vSphere in my day to day job.

 

Would there be any problems with this plan? Is there something about RM CC servers that just won't work if I P2V them? Anyone done this?

 

Thanks.

[Sylv3r]

I can't see there being an issue. I've seen CC4 servers work fine virtualised but those are mainly fresh installs. I guess you've got nothing to lose by giving it a go.

[Edu-IT]

From memory during any migration work etc RM put it on P2V so it does work.

[LazyD]

Thanks for your replies, sounds positive.

 

Edu-IT, sorry I don't understand your reply fully, are you saying you've actually done this in production and it worked ok?

[synaesthesia]

As said above, RM do indeed migrate using P2V setups. I have also succesfully P2V'd CC4 servers with no issues.

[LazyD]

Ok, RM migrating them themselves is one thing, they may have access to software tools, info or processes that the rest of us don't. But as long as other people have P2V'd RM server environments themselves without RM's involvement and it all worked ok, I'm happy to go ahead (can always turn the physicals back on if anything goes badly wrong anyway of course).

[steve_forbes]

Ok, RM migrating them themselves is one thing, they may have access to software tools, info or processes that the rest of us don't. But as long as other people have P2V'd RM server environments themselves without RM's involvement and it all worked ok, I'm happy to go ahead (can always turn the physicals back on if anything goes badly wrong anyway of course).

 

Hi there, I manage the Networks Product Management team here at RM - I can confirm that there is no issue in P2V for CC4 servers, clearly if you want to do it yourself then you can or we can do it for you. We would do our best to support you if you had any issues but of course you may use software that we may not be familiar with and we would only be able to offer limited support for that scenario. Let me know if you have any other questions.

 

Thanks

Steve

[LazyD]

Can anyone confirm if this should still be straight forward with 2 DCs? Obviously would have to take the normal precautions to make sure USB rollback is avoided.

 

steve_forbes, thanks very much for your input. What tools are the RM support staff familiar with in this scenario? We use MVMC where possible and Disk2vhd otherwise.

 

Thanks.

[steve_forbes]

Hi,

 

We have historically used MVMC but this is now no longer supported by Microsoft so we now use DoubleTake Move for our P2V and V2V migrations.

 

Thanks

Steve

[dcwhitworth]

@LazyD If you're interested I've got an old copy of an internal RM document on the P2V process, it's for migration to VMWare but it may have some useful points.

[TheFace]

@LazyD If you're interested I've got an old copy of an internal RM document on the P2V process, it's for migration to VMWare but it may have some useful points.

 

I would like a copy of that if possible please ?

[djm968]

Did a RM CC4 P2V migration for a client some years ago and never had any issues.

[TheFace]

Did you have to stop any services ? Any rm services ?

[djm968]

Did you have to stop any services ? Any rm services ?

 

I didn't risk doing it live!

[habz99]

@LazyD If you're interested I've got an old copy of an internal RM document on the P2V process, it's for migration to VMWare but it may have some useful points.

 

Hi @dcwhitworth, Can i please get a copy of this too, looking into doing this soon.

 

Thanks

[LazyD]

@LazyD If you're interested I've got an old copy of an internal RM document on the P2V process, it's for migration to VMWare but it may have some useful points.

 

Yes please, would like to see that, thanks.