Windows Server: Replacing Server What Best to Do

[PotNoodleTech]

Agree with the above - put Hyper V on the new server, p2v the old server to the new as a hyper v guest, that keeps the entire domain running, then put 2022 and hyper v on the old server, you now have 2 physical servers you can use in the future.

 

Start creating new 2022 guest vms and splitting up roles on to the new servers. Start with a new DC VM and work your way around from there, file server vm, app server vm, print server vm, etc.

 

This gives you a nice easily backupable easily transferrable "set of VMs" to use in the future which should increase reliability and uptime.

[talksr]

Thank you everyone who has contributed. I really appreciate it.

I am going to take your advice and create VMs on the new server - this makes the most sense.

I did get some VMWare quotes, but decided to scrap that on account of the costs, some of you did mention this.

Hyper-V seems a good option to me.

 

I have a few further questions and I would be greatful (not used Hyper-V for a long while)...

 

1.What are the best backup options for this? I would be keen to backup the entire VM and it's system state. Should I be considering Hyper-V Replication?

 

2. In terms of creating my server role VMs in Hyper-V, the host server has a 1tb HDD for storage. I have made a folder in the root called Hyper-V which has machine configs, VHDs etc. Is this best practice? One of the VMs will be a file server and would have a fairly large D\ with all of the staff shared area stored on it.

 

3. The host server has 4 NICs. Would you allocate one physical NIC to each VM? Are there any benefits to it?

 

4. If I am to split the roles from the old server into different VMs (File, Print, Domain etc), what licencing implications are there for the server software? Would I need to buy x amount of Server 2022 standard for each VM or is there a different licencing structure for VMs as they are not physical?

 

Thanks again, I really appreciate the advice.

[mavhc]

Why don't you have SSDs in the server? It's 2023. Get SSDs first

[Koldov]

I have been on a similar journey to you (for quite a while now as I can never seem to find the 'right' way to do it, or the time) plus I'm mostly worried I'm going to mess it all up and lose everything, as I'm trying to do it all on one server and don't have the luxury of just copying the data...

 

1.What are the best backup options for this? I would be keen to backup the entire VM and it's system state. Should I be considering Hyper-V Replication?

 

Pretty sure everyone is going to say Veeam, imho it has a bit of a steep learning curve, it can be complicated but it seems to do a good job once you've ironed out all the kinks. Also it depends on what you're backing up, where to and what your retention is going to look like.

 

2. In terms of creating my server role VMs in Hyper-V, the host server has a 1tb HDD for storage. I have made a folder in the root called Hyper-V which has machine configs, VHDs etc. Is this best practice? One of the VMs will be a file server and would have a fairly large D\ with all of the staff shared area stored on it.

 

The way I set it up is that everything is in the Hyper-V folder, there are other ways to do it that I've seen (even with VHDs on other drives/partitions) but I think the general idea is that you create 1 x VHD for the OS and then add another VHD for data (instead of just creating 1 large VHD and then partition it inside the Virtual Machine). This can get complicated though as each VM only gets a UUID and each VHD only gets a name so I found pairing up the 'disk' with the 'machine' difiicult... Does anyone put each in different named sub-folder?

 

3. The host server has 4 NICs. Would you allocate one physical NIC to each VM? Are there any benefits to it?

 

Sounds good! Unfortunately I only had 2 NICs which I initially had teamed, but split them back up so 1 is for the Host OS and 1 is for the 2 x Hyper-V.

 

4. If I am to split the roles from the old server into different VMs (File, Print, Domain etc), what licencing implications are there for the server software? Would I need to buy x amount of Server 2022 standard for each VM or is there a different licencing structure for VMs as they are not physical?

 

I believe you can have 1 Server OS license and this allows you to have 2 x VMs (the caveat is that nothing else but the Server OS and Hyper-V can run on the host). This can get a bit sticky if you have 1 x VM as a DC (which we all know should have nothing else running on it) and then 1 x VM for everything else, which is pretty much impossible depending on what else you have to run (Print, SIMS, File Shares, etc.).

 

Otherwise you might have to think about Datacentre licensing, but others will know more...

[talksr]

I have been on a similar journey to you (for quite a while now as I can never seem to find the 'right' way to do it, or the time) plus I'm mostly worried I'm going to mess it all up and lose everything, as I'm trying to do it all on one server and don't have the luxury of just copying the data...

 

 

 

Pretty sure everyone is going to say Veeam, imho it has a bit of a steep learning curve, it can be complicated but it seems to do a good job once you've ironed out all the kinks. Also it depends on what you're backing up, where to and what your retention is going to look like.

 

 

 

The way I set it up is that everything is in the Hyper-V folder, there are other ways to do it that I've seen (even with VHDs on other drives/partitions) but I think the general idea is that you create 1 x VHD for the OS and then add another VHD for data (instead of just creating 1 large VHD and then partition it inside the Virtual Machine). This can get complicated though as each VM only gets a UUID and each VHD only gets a name so I found pairing up the 'disk' with the 'machine' difiicult... Does anyone put each in different named sub-folder?

 

 

 

Sounds good! Unfortunately I only had 2 NICs which I initially had teamed, but split them back up so 1 is for the Host OS and 1 is for the 2 x Hyper-V.

 

 

 

I believe you can have 1 Server OS license and this allows you to have 2 x VMs (the caveat is that nothing else but the Server OS and Hyper-V can run on the host). This can get a bit sticky if you have 1 x VM as a DC (which we all know should have nothing else running on it) and then 1 x VM for everything else, which is pretty much impossible depending on what else you have to run (Print, SIMS, File Shares, etc.).

 

Otherwise you might have to think about Datacentre licensing, but others will know more...

 

Thanks, that is really helpful. Glad I am not the only one who has been in this situation. Unfortunately, only working in primaries, they just don't have massive budgets, money and time are scarce, but I would rather spend some time and money now and put in the best solution so I can tick the job off knowing that they have a good solution in place.

[Koldov]

Unfortunately, only working in primaries, they just don't have massive budgets, money and time are scarce, but I would rather spend some time and money now and put in the best solution so I can tick the job off knowing that they have a good solution in place.

 

Agreed, well worth looking at the long game and getting it right first time (of course in IT 'getting it right' changes with each new tech advancement and it's not always easy to keep up) and having said that I'm pretty sure I can hear the 'why do you even need a server...? Just move to Azure, Cloud MIS, Cloud Print and Sharepoint' crew on the horizon... not that they're wrong of course, but time consuming to plan, implement and retrain and if your support is limited by time & budgets (or at least what's spent on IT support/training), or there's a lot of SLT pushback it's a slog.

[Sephiroth]

To answer the last batch of questions:

 

1.What are the best backup options for this? I would be keen to backup the entire VM and it's system state. Should I be considering Hyper-V Replication?

As mentioned, my recommendation is to get Veeam. If you're going to be backing up fewer than 10 devices you can get the free version of Veeam Backup and Replication (link). The alternative is to look at cloud backups, depending on your dataset, though this could get very expensive very quickly.

 

2. In terms of creating my server role VMs in Hyper-V, the host server has a 1tb HDD for storage. I have made a folder in the root called Hyper-V which has machine configs, VHDs etc. Is this best practice? One of the VMs will be a file server and would have a fairly large D\ with all of the staff shared area stored on it.

What you've done is the default, I believe. The advice I had from a support company is to create a 'Virtual Hard Disks' directory under the VM directory that it creates and save the VM disks in there. I'm using this method on a Hyper-V S2D cluster with no issues at all.

 

3. The host server has 4 NICs. Would you allocate one physical NIC to each VM? Are there any benefits to it?

This is personal preference. Depending on your network structure, I would suggest making a team across 2 or 3 of them for data so you have ~3Gb connection to the network segmented by VLANs, then 1 for management/iLO (if applicable - I'm not sure how HP do things as I use Dell).

 

4. If I am to split the roles from the old server into different VMs (File, Print, Domain etc), what licencing implications are there for the server software? Would I need to buy x amount of Server 2022 standard for each VM or is there a different licencing structure for VMs as they are not physical?

My advice would be to get a licence for a Datacenter edition of Windows. This will give you a lot of room to change things in future, splitting out roles so that there are no conflicts and allowing you to set up testing environments. It may be worth looking at licencing agreements available, but MS licensing is a dark art so I can't help there

 

If costs are a concern and you're willing to put some effort and time in (assuming you have any), it might be worth looking at an alternative hypervisor like the Xen Project or KVM under a Linux distro.

Edited February 2, 2024 by Sephiroth

[talksr]

A quick question on this subject.

 

The host server is running Hyper-V very nicely.

From the host server, I have the new DC virtual server set up and installed.

I would like to add a Data D:\ drive to this virtual server for storage of user folders and profiles.

I note that the OS hard drive is listed under the SCSI Controller (sr-02.vhdx).

Would I add another hard drive in this area or would I be better to add one under the 'Hard Drive' subsection which is slightly further down?

 

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

[PotNoodleTech]

Yes add a hard disk and go through the process of setting a size etc.

 

You'll then need to go into disk manager on the virtual machine and add it as a windows disk and give it a drive letter etc.

 

(The one you are talking about under the hard drive section appears to be a half-added disk? Looks like it hasnt been completed as it doesn't have a vhdx file under it which is the actual data?)

[talksr]

Yes add a hard disk and go through the process of setting a size etc.

 

You'll then need to go into disk manager on the virtual machine and add it as a windows disk and give it a drive letter etc.

 

(The one you are talking about under the hard drive section appears to be a half-added disk? Looks like it hasnt been completed as it doesn't have a vhdx file under it which is the actual data?)

 

Thank you, ahah yes you are right. Silly me, I must have tried a few weeks ago and never finished it.