atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories A tough project - ideas please

My next project will be to take a Linux server with a RAID 5 array and 600GB of data and convert it to Windows 2008 Server R2. It all has to be done on site and downtime must be kept to a minimum. It's a hard task considering the huge amount of data to be backed up. I cannot just restore it, either since it will be a Linux file system on the backup media. Seems I'll use Samba to connect to the share from a Windows box but then I have to backup 600GB over a 100MB connection. That could take a day alone. I cannot buy anything as the budget they gave me is for time only. Any ideas?

What about something like https://www.virtualbox.org/

So a $30.00 gigabit network card or $60 gigabit network switch is too much? Don't know anyone with a gigabit switch to borrow to copy the data faster to the other server? Assuming both servers have gigabit network cards.

This is a gubmint office. Feds - EPA. I bid on the project and won. Possibly a GB switch is the answer. I had not considered that. I could buy a used one and just keep it. Hmmmm .... that might do it. Still would take a couple hours but that's less than all day.

Can you do the backup ahead of time?

That's the big challenge. What I will do is to configure a full backup and let that run overnight. Then do an incremental backup at the time of the conversion. That leaves the restore which will take several hours easy. But that's still less time than they expect to be down. With a gig switch it could work.

Instead on backing up with media and then doing the transfer and restore, It would save you time using rsync.

A gigabit switch and rsync are the best way to make a incremental transfer in a live environment. It will save you the backup and restore time.

Slightly off topic, but I am curious. Do you know why they have decided to migrate away from Linux?

Because they are the only field office with Linux. Linux support is very hard to find and when they find it it is very expensive. They have no way to effectively manage it. Windows Server is just better over all for them and offers many features like virtualization that they can employ.