Moving SBS 2008 to new ESXi 5 server

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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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Hello,

I have the following pieces that I inherited from a previous IT group:
*Server A is a PE 2950 w/ESXi 4.1 (free) hosting Windows SBS 2008 Premium (VM Production server w/Domain & Exchange services)
*Server B is a PE 2900 w/ESXi 5.1 (free) (Currently a test server with no vital VM's running on it)
*B&R 10 Advanced Server
*B&R 10 Advanced Server - Small Business Server Edition
*B&R 10 Advanced Server - Small Business Server Edition Deduplication
*B&R 10 Advanced Server Universal Restore

When two of Server B's drives failed a couple of weeks ago, I rebuilt the array with server grade drives to increase storage with the objective of making it the production server, and Server A the backup server.

My question is this: What is the best way to get the production SBS VM on Server A over to Server B with as little or no downtime with the components listed above? The contents of the two virtual drives for the SBS VM are 80 & 250 GB.

Thanks in advance!

Thu, 12/27/2012 - 00:04
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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You will have downtime anyway when you shutdown exchange on the current server so that it doesn't accumulate changes, that will be later discarded, while you are restoring on the new server.
The first idea is to install B&R inside the VM, create full backup (will take some time), shutdown Exchange, create incremental backup after that (will take less time), then boot an empty VM on the second server and restore the backup on it. You can check that restoring works (and restores in reasonable time) if you try to restore the initial full backup first.

Fri, 12/28/2012 - 19:39
truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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Awesome!

I'm trying with Universal Restore now to a similarly set up VM machine matching the sizes of the drives used on the production machine as well as the processors used.

Will this restore affect the currently running Server A regarding IP addresses?

Thu, 12/27/2012 - 15:31
truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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IP addresses will be reassigned if you use DHCP as MAC address will change, but you'll have two machines with the same name anyway. If VM hosts, for example, the Domain Controller, you shouldn't connect it to the production network at all until the original VM is retired. So you should restore it without rebooting, then turn off network interfaces, then try to run the restored VM.

Fri, 12/28/2012 - 19:38