ALL Hard Drive swaping from DL 380 G3 to DL 380 G4

[br1anang]

Hello,

I have a question regaring the swapping of hard drives from DL 380 G3 to GL 380 G4.

Would it be possible to pull out all the disk from G3 and put it on G4?
The raid configurations are the same, the disk sizes are the same in G3 and G4.

Would you think there would be issues when the system boots up?  The server is running windows server 2003.

Or can anyone give me a good soloution to do a full system copy from G3 to G4?

Thanks guys!

[Suman_1978]

Hi,

DL380 G3 has Smart Array 5i Plus Controller (integrated on system board).

DL380 G4 has Smart Array 6i Controller (integrated on system board).

First and most important thing is to take a backup before swapping hard drives.

Generally pulling drives from G3 and putting into G4 should work because both have SCSI controllers, drives and backplane.

Technically speaking, once you put drives from G3 into G4 and boot, the server may blue screen because of difference in drivers.

Smart Array controllers are different, even chipset and video controllers are different.

Thank You!
I am a HP employee
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[br1anang]

The issue with the drivers should be fixed by intalling the apporiate drivers I assume.
Since this is a different machine, each driver (audio, video, smart array controller, motherboard) must be reinstalled?

As long as the OS boots up, and it shows the log in screen to the windows server, it's safe to assume that it works?

What is the best method of backing up? Some one mentioned bare metal backup, What/How does it mean and how can I do it?

Thanks!

[Mark Matthews]

You will probably get a bluescreen when Windows starts due to the difference in Windows driver between the 5i and 6i.

ie, Windows will be looking to boot from the 5i and its no longer there.

I have had success before by installing the driver for the 6i while the disks are still in the old server, THEN swapping them over.

Your mileage may vary though, and I have had this not work before also. In this case you can reinstall Windows over the top of itself, then install the latest / last PSP for the G4 once Windows is up and running.

You wont lose any data but WILL lose desktop settings, shortcuts, may have to reinstall apps due to registry entries being changed etc...

Bare metal backup normally means taking an image of the whole server, rather than just a files / folders backup.

Although I think you'd still encounter the same problem above with the drivers when you restored the image to the other server...

[br1anang]

When I swapped the drives, all went well. The system array was found, logical drives were found.
Only problem was when the windows server splash screen started loading up .. the system rebooted.

This happened a couple of times.
Each time never getting past the Windows server splash screen.
My guess was that the boot.ini had to be reconfigured..