Moving SIMS Server to new machine

[joshd]

Hi Guys

 

As part of a proposed network redesign at a school I look after, we want to move the SIMS installation do a dedicated server. At present, everything at the school runs from one single server and we want to get SIMS moved off for reasons of security and availability.

 

I've spoken to capita who have quoted £550 to do the work for us, but Im wondering what would be involved in doing this myself?

The company i work for does outsourced IT for businesses and schools so I am no amateur at SQL Server and Windows Server 2003 etc.

 

Has anyone undertaken anything like this themselves and if so how straightforward was it?

 

One last thing, the current server runs Server 2003 64bit and SQL 2008 64 bit aswell. The new server will more than likely be running the 32 bit server and 32 bit SQL, will this make the process any more difficult?

 

Thanks

 

Josh

[vikpaw]

Hi Josh, the process wont be particularly difficult, but if you don't have the experience with SIMS, Capita may not support your installation afterwards. I think £550 isn't bad, i thought they normally charged closer to a grand with a whole day on site.

 

Lots of us have done this before and there are many other threads on this topic, so there's no point regurgitating it all again. You can try the move and test it out at your own risk, before making it live.

The general process is install svr, install sql, run simsinst to put sims files in place, detach your current db, copy to new location and attach there, reattach the old one back so it still works as a backup, setup connect.ini to point to the correct location, copy the document storage over to the new server into correctly named folders, open sims and tell it where docstorage is. I think that's it really, unless i've forgotten something really simple.

[GREED]

No that is just about it vik!

 

Have no idea what effect moving back from 64bit to 32bit will have on the db, if anything. Might question what the move back, if you already have that in place why not stay with that architecture (everything is going that was anyway!)?

[joshd]

Thanks for your responses guys.

 

Greed, the reason for moving back is that the schools have had some compatibility issues with 64bit server and also, they machine only has a couple of gig of RAM anyway which kind of makes using 64bit a little bit pointless. I will see how it goes in that respect i think.

 

Vikpaw, i thought it would be fairly straightforward. I do have a fair amount of experience with SIMS from the installation of the client on teachers machines etc so I have a pretty good idea of how it works. I think i may build a virtual 2003 server in our Lab here and do a test setup and migration of SIMS onto that as a test.

 

Thanks for the advice!

[vikpaw]

Definitely do a virtual test, and in fact why not keep the real live server virtual. We just did it here over the summer and it's much more robust for say updates, when you want to quickly undo using a snapshot. I must have used that feature at least 3 or 4 times at the end of the summer, and again in late august for the summer update.

 

The instructions must be right if GREED agreeds(!) with me as it was his instructions i followed the very first time i set up a test server, all those many years ago.

 

Things to look out for are that you don't run both at once, and the doc server is setup correctly. sometimes you have to go to the local folder and run the dmconfig utility manually to force it to redirect. Otherwise you'll end up with it looking for the old server and if it's still on, it will send files there.

[joshd]

Vik, im actually considering virtualising both servers (plus an additional linux server running fog. I have quite an extensive background in virtualization and have labs running both ESXi and Xenserver and think that re-virtualization the existing single server is quite a good fit for this school.

[GREED]

Vik I completely forgot that, yes that is the process I used many a time!

In fact I still have them somewhere! lol

 

Josh that is a good reason!

Edited October 23, 2010 by GREED

[Cache]

I don't think moving between 32bit and 64bit should have any major affect on the DB. I occaisonally take the latest backup and restore it to a Windows XP virtual machine for testing/training use and have never had any problems crop up that I can think of.

[joshd]

Thats good to know cache! I will give it a try during the week and let u know how it goes.