Migrating Hyper-V storage server to another VM in Hyper-V

Question

Here at work we have a storage server (windows server 2003) VM in Hyper-V. We recently installed a new VM in Hyper-V with server 2012 R2 and would like to migrate our storage server to this new VM. We have a a virtual HD allocated to the 2003 server with all of our shares. Would the following steps work for migrating between VMs?:

Copy Volume registry info from 2003 Storage Server

Shutdown 2003 Storage Server

Allocate the VHD to the new VM (2012 R2)

Import the Registry info to retain all shares and permissions

Update the IP on the new VM to match the old VM.

Done....

Does this work or should I approach it differently?

Answer 1

In your case, i would use Migration tools that are included in Windows Server 2012 R2. It will migrate everything (shares, permissions, data...) and it's a full supported way to migrate from Windows Server 2003 to a newest operating system. Last but not least, it's very simple to use it.

Basically the process will be the following : - Install a new Windows Server 2012 R2 VM with all needed VHDs - Install File Role and Services in the new WS2012R2 VM - Install the Server Migration Tools on destination Server - Open TCP and UDP port 7000 and make sure that it is not in use by other applications. This port is used by Send-SmigServerData and Receive-SmigServerData to establish a data transfer connection. - Verify that the destination path has sufficient disk space to migrate the data - Use the same drive letters for the destination server volumes as for the source server. This is required, because FSRM migration requires the drive letter to remain the same. - Install migration tool on source server and execute it

All detailled step by step operations are here : File and Storage Services: Prepare to Migrate https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn479284%28v=ws.11%29.aspx File and Storage Services: Migrate the File and Storage Services Role https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn479292%28v=ws.11%29.aspx