HP offers this nifty little software to help you to migrate your installation from the old or another platform to Proliant servers. With a management server, it will reboot the source server and copy the partitions directly to the destination server. This is done using with the aid iSCSI Software Initiator from Microsoft.
You can download the trial version from HP.com. Create a bootable CD from the installation file. Run the CD on the management and the source server. Follow the simple instructions on the screen. Move the CD over to the destination server and reboot. On the management, server initiates the cloning. After 35 minutes for 17 GB of data over a 1Gb switch it is done!
The only catch is that your destination Proliant server should be G4 or newer and another thing.
For me after successful cloning, most of the services on the destination server cannot start. Event log, SNMP, HP SMH service could start, the rest just gave a “Dependant service not started” or “error 1058”. Things got weirder when I could not display the details of the event log and properties of the services. It is as if I have no permission to manage the server.
Running out of choices, I decided to re-install Windows 2003 SP1 hoping maybe it might set things right. Strangely I could not copy the service pack installation to the disk!
Turns out that the system disk individual folder permissions got clobbered. Administrator group have no read, write, modify permissions to the disk. So that is why none of the services is able to start. Nice though, I can still log in.
After spending an hour or so, manually setting the permissions of the folder to be nearly identical, the services are now able to start.
Soon for the moment of truth, to cutover.
For more details check the software, check it out here
Update 9 Sept 07
The customer has done some changes. So I have to redo the cloning. This time round all the services were started normally, none of the previous weird behaviours. The teaming of the interface was not working properly, so I have to re-create the teaming.
One of the folders were missing in the destination server. I recreated it back manually. The registry entry for this folder is buggered, so I have to force it to recognize my new folder. Thereafter all the application services were up running normally.
In summary, highly recommended, but advisable to update your configuration information before you start.