SBS 2003 to ESX 3.5 Migration & Virtualisation

[themusicofsound]

Hi there,

I have a question regarding a migration to ESX Server which I am hoping the gurus can cast some light on. We are moving from a SBS 2003 server to a full Server 2003 & Exchnage 2007 Environment. The first step of this migration is to get the SBS server on to the ESX box and make the file store semi independent of SBS. Ideally I would like to:

1. Have the SBS box on a VM - about 30GB - I would use the standard VM P2V boot CD to create this VM.

2. Put the File Storage (about 200GB) on to some kind of Separate VM so that when I decomission the SBS server I can redirect this file store to another 2003 server.

I am not really sure how to approach the file store part of this equasion - will I have to set up a Windows 2003 Server VM of 200GB size to put the data on to or is there a better way of doing this?

[fhpaschen]

With VMware, you can probably do it a little easier. Create a 30GB VMDK for your P2V migration. This would hold whatever partitions you currently have in the system. Then you can add a hard disk to the virtual machine and create your 200GB "file storage" drive. This would appear to the VM as a new disk, 😧 or whatever. Later, when you what to get rid of SBS2003, just remove, but don't delete the virtual disk from your SBS VM and add it to your new 2003 VM and it will appear to that server as a new drive. Assuming the content on this drive is just file shares, etc. You would only then need to create new shares and you're off and running.

[the-waves]

I guess another way to do it would be to migrate the file share now by making a Windows 2003 Standard VM with enough space for the share, joining it to the domain, and migrating the files over (robocopy to maintain permissions?) - that way when the sbs box goes off the network it won't be nescessary to reconfigure the shares and permissions.