Win2k3 Server Migration
At work I have a Windows 2003 server running on a Dell Poweredge 2650 that's just fallen out of warranty. I have a brand new Dell Poweredge 2950 that I want to bring up as a replacement. The thing is, I don't want to have to manually create the 200+ file shares, 400+/- local groups, and permissions on the new box. It'd be so easy to P2V the old server and turn it into a VM, but that's not an option here. So, I figured out a pretty halfway decent way to image the server over using free tools.
The long and short of it is that, on the old server, you need to load the drivers for the new RAID controller. You'll have to do it manually. (Add new hardware, have disk, etc.) Then I took a CentOS 4.7 rescue disk, booted it, and DD'd the disk over to an image file on an NFS share (my iMac). Then on the new server, boot the CentOS rescue disk, dd the image from NFS to the local disk, and reboot.
Windows comes up, and will complain about needing to find new drivers for everything. But the server is now running on new hardware. Sweet. Linux to the rescue in a Windows shop!