# Upgrading my server & Operating System.. need help



## aimlesspee (Nov 10, 2003)

Hi guys,

I bought a Dell server 6 years ago with 500 gigs.. didn't think i'd run out of HD space.. but i did.. so now i'm upgrading my Dell server to a brand new one.. however, this one will have Server 2012..

I want to be prepared for teh transition.. i want my client computers to be able to connect to the new server seamlessly (or as much as possible)..

Can you please tell me if it is okay that i copy the name of the old server to the new one? and also, my server acts like "DNS" server (i don't know if that is the proper word) .. so the IP address is going to be the same?

Please help me.. computer comes in 2 weeks

Thank you

Uni


----------



## lochlomonder (Jul 24, 2015)

Which OS is running on the current server? Is it a domain controller?


----------



## aimlesspee (Nov 10, 2003)

Server 2008 and yes I believe it is a domain controller


----------



## lochlomonder (Jul 24, 2015)

This is quite an involved process, but help is at hand. If you read this article, it actually gives a good walkthrough of the process. I'm guessing if the current DC has run out of space, you're using it as a file server as well? If that's the case, what is your plan after the DC role is moved to the new server? I would recommend against putting all your eggs in one basket in this manner, if this is the way things are right now. Furthermore, and I realise this depends upon financial limitations, I would recommend having at least two DCs in your domain for redundancy.


----------



## aimlesspee (Nov 10, 2003)

500 gigs lasted me 6 years.. half of it was for the OS (i'm learning about WSUS" and the other half is for my file server.. i am upgrading to a 4 TB HD for my files and 1 TB for the OS drive.. 

by the way, i want to clarify, i'm not an expert.. so is a DC the locail domain name? that's what we have.. i don't host anything like websites.. it's just a file server that has 6 computers connected


----------



## zx10guy (Mar 30, 2008)

I don't know what the 0ld server you have is but it's water under the bridge now that you've ordered a new server. Chances are you could have extended the use of that old server by adding another hard drive and moving the file server data off to that new hard drive.

What model server did you just order? I hope you have at least dual 1 TB and dual 4 TB drives set up for RAID 1. Also keep in mind the rebuild time for a 4TB RAID volume is going to be a very long time if one of the drives fails in the RAID 1 (and for that matter RAID 5 or 10) volume.


----------



## aimlesspee (Nov 10, 2003)

Both the OS and the data storage will have RAID 1 and it's basically 4 HD.

AND YES I kept researching more on WSUS and it's basically all this stuff from updates that is taking up drive space in the OS side so in essence I have 260 gigs of space used up by file storage ad the remainder is OS



zx10guy said:


> I don't know what the 0ld server you have is but it's water under the bridge now that you've ordered a new server. Chances are you could have extended the use of that old server by adding another hard drive and moving the file server data off to that new hard drive.
> 
> What model server did you just order? I hope you have at least dual 1 TB and dual 4 TB drives set up for RAID 1. Also keep in mind the rebuild time for a 4TB RAID volume is going to be a very long time if one of the drives fails in the RAID 1 (and for that matter RAID 5 or 10) volume.


----------



## lochlomonder (Jul 24, 2015)

> y the way, i want to clarify, i'm not an expert.. so is a DC the locail domain name? that's what we have.. i don't host anything like websites.


In principle, it's the same as what you would think of when naming a website, and it's the Fully-Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) you'd be interested in for this job. Here's a Microsoft article which describes how to do that, and you can ignore the references to Server 2003.


----------



## zx10guy (Mar 30, 2008)

aimlesspee said:


> Both the OS and the data storage will have RAID 1 and it's basically 4 HD.
> 
> AND YES I kept researching more on WSUS and it's basically all this stuff from updates that is taking up drive space in the OS side so in essence I have 260 gigs of space used up by file storage ad the remainder is OS


You can trim back the number of update packages WSUS downloads by unselecting OS' and applications you're not using in your environment. I also recently stood up a dedicated WSUS box and had to carve out 290GB of storage for it. But I opted to download a bunch of different things as I have a mix of WinXP, Win7, Win8, Win10, Server 2008, Server 2010, MS Office, etc.


----------

