The same OS in two BL460c

[Hugo Osorio]

Hi all,

I need to have two bl460c g6 servers (same features) installed with Windows 2003 server x64... is there any manner to transfer all of the information from one blade (already installed) to the another one, just like an identical copy or something like that?

(it's just that I have a horrible internet connection... it would take me more than a week to do it using Internet)

If any additional advices.. They will be really appreciated.


Hugo,
Cartagena, COL.

[Michael A. McKenney]

VMWare Enterprise Plus or Microsoft Enterprise Clustering on both servers would be your best solutions. If you have Exchange or SQL on those servers, you need two licenses for them.

[Hugo Osorio]

Thank you Michael,

It would be nice to use VMWare, I have been sort of excited to use it, but unfortunately we don't have budget for more licences. Here in the company where I work, the policy is open source, freeware :|

Dont know if there are solutions in this way...

[Shashwath_1]

Hi..

I would suggest you to create a RAID 1 and install OS and application on server A.

Power on Server B and create create RAID 1

Remove one of the HDD from server A and swap it with server B so that the Array will start rebuilding since it is Mirror.

You will have exactly same image on both the server.

Other way is to install Proliant Migration Pack(PMP). This is a licensed software and license is for per instance or per migration.

[kris rombauts]

regarding the last suggestion ..... the first part is ok, but not the second part, if you follow those steps, the disk from server A will be overwritten by the server B.
What you need to do is create a raid1 array in server A and install the OS on it. Then remove one of the 2 disks and install it in server B, power up server B and it will complainabout a missing disk or degraded logical drive, then insert a new disk and it will rebuild untill the 2 disks are in sync.
You then have to insert a new disk in server A also to make that raid 1 pair redundant of course.


This all works fine, but you will end up with a licensing issue (or you need to have 2 Windows server licenses) and change the server name and ip etc to avoid duplicates on the network.

BTW Windows 2003 is out of support, better go to Windows 2008 if you want a Windows platform.



HTH

Kris

[Hugo Osorio]

Thank you very much Kris..

Well, at first instance, I dont see where are these two HDD established as RAID 1. I have two 146GB HDD in each server

Nevertheless I continue with the suggested procedure... assuming that I do have set up a RAID 1 array in server A.

Then I have extracted the right side HDD in server A (in which windows server is installed)

I have turned off the server B and then I have extracted those two HDD from this server.

I have inserted that HDD previously extracted from server A in this server B. I have done it in the right side bay.

When server B is starting windows, do not issue a complaining message that one disc is missing...

Do you know how can I verify that indeed I have a raid 1 created?

How can I commit the sinchronization of those two discs in spite of not receiving that complaining alert?

Thanks a lot for your help or any other wise guy over here...


Hugo,
Cartagena, COL

[kris rombauts]

Hi Hugo,

if this blade runs Windows, you can verify with the ACU (Array Config Utility) how the disks are configured. Since this server blade only has 2 slots, it will either be in raid0 (striping) or raid1 (mirroring).
Only by lokking at the size of you logical drive you will know how they ar econfigured, so simply lokking in Windows disk management will be enough, you don't even need ACU in thiscase.

i.e. If your disks are 146 Gb and you have a disk in Windows that is approx 140 GB then you know the config is in RAID1. If on the other hand you see a disk in Windows of size = 280 GB (approx. 2 *140 GB) then you know they are in RAID0.

The ACU and other s/w for the bl460c g1 x64 can be downloaded (if not already installed on your server) from www.hp.com i.e:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=3288156&prodTypeId=3709945&prodSeriesId=1842750&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=1113#78214



It is also best to install the Insight Management Agents so the hardware is monitored for eventual hardware issues in the future.


HTH

regards, Kris