Migrating to new Proliants (newer models or Blades)

[Rob Crooks]

I have several MLs and Dls and am either looking to migrate the disks to newer servers or in the case of MLs, to Blades and was wondering about this. According to HP, I can upsize a set of disks from DAS to SAN, but from my experience getting Windows to at least boot is another matter.

Are there any "gotya's" when doing this? Are there any best practices from HP that will allow me to take a Windows 2003 Server running on a RAID 1 set from an ML530 and pop them into a BL25 and have it at least boot locally?

I don't particularily like to have to rebuild every server when upgrading the hardware. There has to be a better way.


Thanks

[Oleg Koroz]

You can build one Server Blade and after Image it and Push to next by RDP

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/rdp.html

[Oleg Koroz]

from ML530 to BL25 - might not work very well or will not work at all

Intel to AMD and Drivers for Chipset

[Rob Crooks]

I understand that well enough, but how can I take a RAID 1 set (which is the OS disk) from an ML530 and migrate it to a BL25?
I found a link on how to move boot disks between RAID controllers, but if I ever wanted to migrate and boot existing RAID sets to a SAN, that I can't see.

From what I have seen, a SAN adaptor is not a RAID controller, but I would still like to boot from it eventually. In the beginning, I can accept to boot from the internal BL25 disks.

[Rob Crooks]

Actually, I would probably use a BL20 instead.

Yes, BL25 is really a different chipset :(


Thanks

[Steven Clementi]

Robert:

As long as you have the proper Smart Array driver and registry entries, you should be able to take a 2 disk array from an ML, place them in a BL and boot it up. I have done it with DL's without any issues, you just need to make sure you install the latest driver and registry entry for the Smart Array 6i controller before moving the drives.

In a Windows environment, once booted, Windows should automatically detect new hardware since it is all, or mostly, plug and play compatible... Windows might then ask you for the Windows CD or the location of the i386 directory. After the system is up and running, all you should need to do is re-run the current or latest PSP on the box to update all the new hardware.

I have never gone from Intel to AMD or AMD->Intel so I am not too sure of the outcome, but I can't see why it would not work. Windows should still be able to load up to the point where it is going to detect new hardware... as long as it has the right array info.


Steven

[Rob Crooks]

Could you refresh me on how to add the SmartArray 6i bits to the registry if you have the time?

It sounds like this might not be as painful as I thought :)

[Steven Clementi · Accepted solution]

The file attached has the 5i and the 6i reg entries. Add the appropiate one and test it out.


Best thing to do is just pull one drive and put it in the blade. If it works, thn you can just add the other , or a spare and let it rebuild.


Steven

[Rob Crooks]

Thank you both for the help, with this information I think I can move ahead with the project.