I'm in the process of migrating from VMWare to Hyper-V and need some advice on handling our file server, which needs to remain online 24/7. Currently, it's the only node in the DFS replication group and has about 8TB in shared folders. Initially, I thought about creating a new blank server in Hyper-V and adding it to the replication group, but that didn't work out well, as it barely copied anything over after being left for 24 hours.
Then I considered another option: backing up the current server, restoring it in Hyper-V, booting it without network access, renaming it, and rejoining it to the domain. This way, most files would already be on the new server, and I would only have to replicate the last couple of days' worth of changes. Has anyone tried this method? Does it seem feasible, or is there a simpler way to go about this? Any tips would be greatly appreciated!
2 Answers
I'd recommend against cloning the existing server directly. Instead, you should set up the new one and use a technique called pre-seeding. You can utilize Robocopy to preseed the new server, which will be much quicker than relying on DFS replication alone since Robocopy can copy files at nearly the speed of your network or disk capacity.
Yeah, managing bandwidth during file transfers can be tricky. Just keep an eye on the network performance and maybe schedule the transfer during off-peak hours if possible.
If you have Veeam, you can power down the server, back it up, restore it to Hyper-V, and power it back on easily. But since taking a backup and restoring takes over two days for you, that's not really feasible due to the need for 24/7 access.
Exactly! If I could afford to take it down for a couple of days, that would be the way to go, but we need the server up and running all the time.
That's a solid approach! The only concern I have is the potential for the file transfer to hog bandwidth. Past experiences with large file transfers have really slowed down our network. However, I did back up and restore the server on Hyper-V over the weekend, which took some time. If it doesn't work as planned, I'll definitely try pre-seeding with Robocopy!