Need help with my own server

[Big Jim]

server is a Dell R720
I had warning pop up yesterday advising a drive pre-failure.

This drive is part of a RAID-1 array that contains both the host OS (Hyper V 2012) and all of the stored VMs.

I decided to upgrade to slightly larger SSDs (300GB > 480GB), from the current 15k SAS Drives.

The question is, how do I easily migrate the Host OS to the new Array ?
As I can't mix SAS/SATA and HDD/SSD in a raid array I can't simply pull the failing drive and let the Controller re-sync.

And a second question, is it bad practice to store the VMs on the same partition/drive as I have done here ?

 

[Moltuae]

If you don't mind a bit of server downtime, simplest/safest way would be to just image/clone the drives (using Reflect or similar).

And a second question, is it bad practice to store the VMs on the same partition/drive as I have done here ?

I'm not sure if it's 'bad practice' exactly but it's always better to use separate physical discs where you can for anything that may require concurrent access (budget and practicalities permitting), such as virtual machines or user data. In addition to providing parallel access, separate physical drives/volumes make backups, restorations and maintenance simpler.

 

[Markverhyden]

Does this have a real RAID controller? I've never cloned a server that way so I'd be concerned about how the controller would handle the large drives. I'd think that just doing an image of the system, swap the drives, build the new array, then restore the image would be quicker anyways.

On a single RAID 1 for everything. Personally I'd avoid that if at all possible. While it's not the optimum for speed my needs are very modest. I'm running my production server with RAID 6 with a hot spare.

 

[Big Jim]

host os and vms on raid1, network shared files on a seperate raid 10 array (quite possible I will be replacing/upgrading this in the future as well.

which software do you reccomend for the imaging ?
Macrium ?
we use the normal edition here, but will that handle the server os from a boot disk ?
I just tried to install the normal edition on the host OS and it refused "server not supportyed" or some such message.
downloaded a free trial of the server version that installed fine, but with hyper-V being "server core" it doesn't do anything when asked to run.

I am running Veeam here but I am not fully up to speed with how it works yet and I have it installed on one of the VMs.
Just tried to install it on the host OS but it requires .net 4.6, tried to install that and it complains of a missing windows update, so I try and install the update and it tells me it is not applicable for my system.

It really shouldn't be this bloody hard should it ?

 

[Moltuae]

we use the normal edition here, but will that handle the server os from a boot disk ?
I just tried to install the normal edition on the host OS and it refused "server not supportyed" or some such message.
downloaded a free trial of the server version that installed fine, but with hyper-V being "server core" it doesn't do anything when asked to run.

Should image fine from a Reflect boot disk, or from another machine. You can't install the free edition of Reflect on a Server OS but it will clone/image any offline system disk.

Just FYI: If you become a Macrium reseller, they'll give you 2 free NFR (Not For Resale) licences that you can use on your own systems, one Workstation licence and one Server licence.

 

[Big Jim]

Should image fine from a Reflect boot disk, or from another machine. You can't install the free edition of Reflect on a Server OS but it will clone/image any offline system disk.

Just FYI: If you become a Macrium reseller, they'll give you 2 free NFR (Not For Resale) licences that you can use on your own systems, one Workstation licence and one Server licence.

cool I'll give it a go later when I close shop for the day

currently working on installing 100+ updates on the Core OS

 

[timeshifter]

Why not just clean install the host OS then copy over your VMs?

 

[Sky-Knight]

Because you can't just "copy" HyperV Vms... you can move the vhdx files, but you will have to redefine the containers entirely, this changes the GUIDs, MAC addresses, and other hardware level tokens. It's usually not too hard to get the VM back online, but it isn't nearly as clean as doing the same thing on a vSphere system.

 

[Markverhyden]

I'm a big fan of Clonezilla but it doesn't handle different drive sizes well.

How many VM's and "stuff" do you have? What kind of backup system? What's your tolerance for downtime, etc?

Just checked my production machine. I was mistaken, thought is was a 720 but it's a 710. But it's probably the same, 6 2.5 bays. In the past I had it as RAID 5, no hot spare. After some bad luck I changed things to RAID 6 with hot spare. 6 300 GB SAS spindles and I have around 1.3 gb of storage. I think RAID 1 for the hypervisor with VM's and RAID 10 for the rest is ok. But there's a lot of wasted space in that configuration.

 

[Big Jim]

macrium did the job.
can't really have downtime whilst shop is open as everything is centralised on the server in terms of files etc and when the DC is turned off everything starts to run really slowly and no internet access etc.
so this was done last night when I closed shop, was here till about 9:30 messing around with various things.

I am now in the process of moving all the VMs to a seperate partition.
All have been moved apart from the main DC.
I have setup a 2nd VM as a backup DHCP/DNS/DC but as soon as I pause the main DC things don't work properly.
So it looks like my AD failover doesn't work properly, I tried demoting the 2nd server and uninstalling/reinstalling AD services but its no different.

don't want to attempt to move the main DC unless the back up is running and working properly.
any machine that connects whilst main dc is running shows the network as a domain network, but if I pause the main DC an connect a PC then it just shows public/private network.

 

[timeshifter]

Did you use the free Macrium?

 

[Big Jim]

Did you use the free Macrium?

yes