SBS2003 server virtualization re-install.

Client had a server running Small Business Server 2003 that had degraded and slowed over time as well as experiencing system failures. Proposed to client a fresh installation of the server operating system. Server infrastructure consisted of the SBS03 machine and another server running Server 2003 Storage Server with Storage Craft ShadowProtect installed. The storage server was configured to take incremental backups of the production server every 15 minutes. The backup server was also capable of virtualization of the production server should it fail and become unrecoverable.

I took a final backup of the production server then took it offline from the network. Then I virtualized the production server on the backup server. Once the virtual server was stable and communicating on the network I reinstalled SBS2003 on the physical hardware. One change I made to the hardware was I reconfigured the drives of the data partition into a RAID 10 rather than the RAID 5 it was originally configured with. I then migrated all roles, data shares, application data, Exchange mailboxes, and domain services over to the new installation server. I changed the login script to point all users to the new server. Once the server was stable and tested I uninstalled all SBS components from the virtual server, removed it from the network and purged it from the backup server.

The client was able to prolong their current infrastructure as well as experience better server performance until budget is available for a server platform migration to SBS08.

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