NT38 Hardware Exchange 12/14/05

[CreativeNRG]

Originally Posted by dvanburen

FTP is up for now. You can also make changes to your CP. We are only left with 3 possibilities at this point to make this work, and I need to test one tomorrow before I take down the box again to do it for real. Bear in mine, we may have to take down FTP and CP changes again tomorrow, but not unless we are 100% sure this procedure is going to work.

You are going to have to take the box down AGAIN to do it for real ? Are we going to suffer any data loss ? When was the image taken ?

[Tina]

LOL I always want to know 'what happened?' too.

Well I posted here and then sent in a ticket .. they told me my pw was wrong, and I did not save the paste I did into the form ... so I can't check .. but I'm 100% that's wrong because the paste was from my config file and when I did this... .... the problem turned out to be that I had to add myself as a user once that was done, it worked....

thanks for the help.
Tina

[Baldy]

Almost 11.. time for an update? I see FTP is working again? What's the scoop?

Thanks..

[admin]

Still not done, we still had issues with getting it to take to the new hardware. We know what that issue is now. So we are just going to keep doing live copies until we get 100% right before we take down FTP again to make a copy with no changes. This way seems to make a bit more sense. Get it working then make the switch with a new copy.

[Brangwyn]

Could you not put the user drive(s) in the old machine and software raid it until you've got the new hardware prepped? then move the drive(s) into the new hardware.

[admin]

Just 2 drives raided in NT38 we can't even move the drives to the new hardware IE the image will not even work. But I think we know the problem with that seagate sent us 400GB drives when they should have sent us 250GB drives and win2k does not like anything over 250GB drives if your just moving it, so we are working around that issue now as well...

It's be tons of fun, good thing is we can make all the mirros and do testing until we find the 100% sure fire way to do it with no more down time.. It's just being a real pain since we are moving from supermicro to sun hardware using the new AMD's in this switch. I am about to say screw and order another one of the supermicro's like it, that was the only one we ordered for testing. Now I am glad I did not order a crap load of them. lol

[Brangwyn]

win2k does not like anything over 250GB drives if your just moving it

Whats it not liking exactly? ... 400GB Drives aren't an issue with 2K, filling the root up, or exceeding other file size limits perhaps, but you'd have that issue no matter what OS, 2K, 2K3, XP etc.

[admin]

It gave is an LBA48 error I think it was. Has to do with a large drives over 250GB. So when we mirror from the 250 to 400 it no longer likes the drive. We got it working on a 120GB drive just making a mirror and booting up so it can support the hardware no issues. But I think we found a way to fix it today. I will keep it updated as the techs let me know.

[dvanburen]

Thw Win2k installer does not support drives over 137GB. In order to run the repair to get the drive to boot on the new hardware, the installer has to recognize the drive properly or it will hose it. Win2K does NOT natively support lba48, you have to add a registry key, which is added automatically in some cases. See http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;305098 for more information on lba48 and win2k.

[Brangwyn]

Create an SP4 slipstreamed install CD (I guess your using original 2000 media?) and you should be good as gold with respect to the installer recognising 137+, you can also slipstream in the later Regedit to enable biglba, I think I've got a install CD here with that already set somewhere I might be able to fish out to see how I did if ya need.

Edit, just remembered too we used to be able to swap for a very small fee old media with newer ones from microsoft here in NZ that included the latest SP's already streamed in, if you don't want to muck around creating your own, you could see if they still offer this perhaps and update some of your older install CD's.

I usually create a new install CD everytime a major SP comes out, it just makes things a little easier, a few less things I have to patch after a rebuild and also means I can include latest hardware drivers for NIC's etc in it as well.

[mresell]

Slipstreaming is highly recommended for windows server management.

[admin]

Slipstreaming is good for "new" installs but we kind of do this with images, it's much faster that way. Our images have all of our drives and everything installed, so all we have to do is image it to the new drive. Being that NT38 was our first SATA and drive bigger than 137GB our image seems to be missing the biglba, but a little odd since NT38 had 250GB drives.

So we will be adding our findings to our images as well so they will support the big drives right off the bat.

[Brangwyn]

Do you update the SID after imaging? Or are you cloning using sysprep ie the MS Authorised way to do it?

If your not already doing so, it really pays to change the SID after Imaging to prevent duplicate SID's on your network, otherwise you can run into unexpected security issues and I'm sure your aware that Microsoft does not provide support for computers that have been installed via Binary Image cloning.

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=162001
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/NewSid.html

If you want to use imaging to save time, best thing to do imo is actually a full install of the server to ensure you get a uinquie SID etc (also prevents a few other issues with changing the machine name after the GUI setup has completed), then you can image each machine for later restore purposes if required once setup fully, just means you avoid a few issues and don't run the risk of invalidating your MS Support Agreement.

[dvanburen]

We actually have several SP4 install CD's (MS Originals). None of them work properly with drives over 137GB, as lba48 is disabled by default. I didn't think this was the case either until I ran into it a few months back when installing Win2K on a 300GB HDD. I was forced to install to smaller media, add the reg key, and ghost it.

[mresell]

Well, unfortunately...HW is not w/o it's pitfalls...when you think you have compatible systems that are stable you often can't get that HW anymore and there is always hw that will rear it's head. Everytime you change either SW or HW you run the risk of a problem...Lot's of people really take that for granted. It's when it doesn't work that you notice it. LOL.