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This may be a silly question.

I have a colocated server that is running server 2008 R2. I use it for IIS, MailServer, SQL Server and MYSQL. I also have some custom dlls installed for some of my classic asp work.

Here is my concern... How do I back this thing up? If it were a hyper-v system I could just backup the image, but its not.

I want to have a Norton Ghost like image so that I can restore the server at anytime? Also, if there is a way to ghost a server (colocated- through RDP), can I then use the image with different hardware and expect it to work? Lets say the server explodes and I buy different hardware from Dell.

Please advise.

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I think you need a different backup strategy.

Ghosting will require the machine to be offline whilst this happens. As ghosting requires bit level access to a non-changing file system.

Enabling Hyper-V is certainly one strategy, the other is that your hosting provider might offer a managed backup solution. These usually have a restore aspect to them as well.

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The problem is that i own the hardware, and the COLO facility has no management, just cheap bandwidth. I have access to the server, at the colo, I can afford to take it down for a few hours.

Can i convert an install of windows server 2008 to hyperv? Is that possible?

Frank

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You can install Hyper V on Windows Server 2008 R2 as a role, just like IIS. You can convert the running machine using the sysinternals disk2vhd tool, then run it under Hyper V. You could also wipe the server and install the standalone Hyper-V server, rather than having the overhead of running it with Windows Server 2008 R2.

As disk2vhd can be run from the command line, you could script and schedule it to run at regular intervals to an external HDD.

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