Copy Windows 2003 Server from one EVA to another

[Oliver_M]

Hi All,

I have to copy some Windows 2003 Server from one (older) EVA to another (newer) EVA.
Is there any tool to do this? I read some about "Business Copy EVA", the bad thing: we don't have this license between this EVA's.

Is there a tool such paragon partiton manager (which can deal with the QLogic HBA!!) to copy alle the data over the san? configure san to see both EVA's and copy from one partition to the other.

thx for help!!

Regards,
Oliver

[Víctor Cespón]

I understand that you have the servers configured to boot from the SAN, and Windows installed on a LUN in the EVA.
To replicate a vdisk from one EVA to the other the license needed is for Continous Access. You can install Command View 7 and it will give you a temporary license valid for 6 months. This will allow you to make a exact copy of a vdisk from one EVA to the other.

The other possibility is pressenting the vdisk on the old EVA and a blank vdisk of the same size on the new EVA to a host and use a cloning software to copy everything. You must be sure that it can handle disks connected through fiber.

[Oliver_M]

yes, boot from san is right. Continuous Access, thx *googling* ;)

[Uwe Zessin]

You could also map the source and destination virtual disks to a Linux/Unix server and perform a simple block copy using "dd".

[Oliver_M]

what do you think about a gzipped tar? are there any problems about the file permissions?

dd: somethink like dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1 (from one lun to the other one)?

[Uwe Zessin · Accepted solution]

I don't think "tar" really understands all NTFS characteristics, so I would not use it.

I rather thought about something like like:
# dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=65536

(make the destination disk as large as the source disk and let "dd" copy the partition table as well)

I have used this trick to copy some virtual disks containing VMware VMFS volumes between two EVAs, worked fine.

[Adam Garsha]

Has anyone ever used dynamic disks (e.g. UNIX style) mirror/allow-sync/break-mirror/done?