SERVER CLEANUP

[Koldov]

Well, it's been a few months since I moved SIMS to a VM, so I thought I might be brave and remove all the old SIMS files from the server...

 

The old server is a physical server that has gone from being the only server with all the roles, DC, plus SIMS, plus file shares, plus well... everything, to being pretty much a VM host (still a work in progress and I need to get those pesky file shares off though)...

 

I've been wary of getting rid of SIMS for some reason (wasn't sure if the VM would work out, needed a fall back/disaster solution etc.) as I guess at a pinch the SIMS infrastructure could need updating, then just getting the database back in there.

 

But anyway unless anyone has a good reason to the contrary I'm going to pull the trigger...

 

However, as it's been chugging away for nearly 10 years, with all sorts of software and roles having been installed and uninstalled, and being an ex-SIMS server, ex-DC and having been in-place upgraded, when I look at Add/Remove Programs there's a lot of old stuff in there....

 

It also runs Veeam and as it was installing, I seem to remember something like what I thought was an 'old' versions of a Redistributable/Runtime/SDK/Native Client came up, could be wrong though...

 

So the question is, how do I know if any of it is being used by any other program or anything, or has dependencies...?

 

Just an example of the first page...

 

[Koldov]

Also, is there ANYTHING that you would keep from the old SIMS server, if it might not have come over in the migration, just in case it's ever needed for historic records...

 

I guess this is why the last time it was migrated the CAPITA engineer just copied the whole S:\ drive... but I wanted a reasonably fresh start and a smaller VM without 10 years of extraneous crud/updates/installs/logs/setup files...

 

Now it's 'crunch' time, I'm worried that wasn't such a good idea...

[Fazza]

Look at doing a P2V and then you'll have it as a VM just in case. The only real way to find out if anything is using it still is to power it off and see what/who complains!

[Koldov]

Yeah, I've got a Veeam backup of the server OS drive that I test as a VM, so that part is OK I guess...

 

The SIMS part is on a separate drive, but I think for now I'll Robocopy it off to archive.

 

It's just the program uninstallation that's bothering me... I've got a test server that I purely use for backup testing with just Veeam and SQL installed and (although it's SQL 2016) the Add/Remove Programs shows that between them they've installed plenty of 'old' stuff I'd initially presume wouldn't have been needed anymore...