Creating a disaster recovery solution from a running server

[Hatrix76]

Hello,

I am currently in charge of a Win2k3 installation which has no proper disaster recovery plan.

We are located on an island so spare parts take long to order and I will for sure NOT get the same hardware if the current server breaks down.

So I tried CA ArcServer with their disaster recovery solution, but it does not really work on different hardware, you need the same hardware.

Then I thought sysprep, but the problem is I sure as hell will not run sysprep on this machine and create an image of that, as I fear that this will do terrible things and I might not be able to boot this server up right away.

As this company works 7 hours a week (golf course) I can not shut it down for a weekend.

So, How to prepare a restore image, sysprepped for fresh hardware, without interrupting the server or without damaging it?

best

 

[digitalprospecter]

I would consider creating an ASR backup and/or a drive image of the server and then if needed to recover you could restore the backup to the new hardware, start in Safe Mode and strip out the old drivers. Then you should be able to install the new drivers the first time you restart in Normal Mode without a BSOD. It also helps to try and source a new server that uses the same brand of chipset as a replacement.