Migrating Windows 2003 domain and servers to a new Blade center
 

Hi all,

After I recently upgrading a companys domain from W2k to W2k3 they have now brought a very nice blade center with 11 blades.They want me to move there current setup which is a W2k3 domain with 11 servers in it including 2 domain controllers, 2 sql servers and 3 citrix servers, onto the blades while keeping the computer names as they are.

These are the options I have come up with :-

1. Backup the servers using Arcserve to do a complete backup of the system state, registry, and all applications/data including the Active directory,dhcp,dns.Then on the blade do a basic vanilla install of w2k3 and restore the backup over the top .

2. Build the servers from scratch and install all the applications manually. Join them to the existing domain and move dhcp, dns, and the ad roles over.I know this solution will work but is going to be very time consuming...

I am going to test option 1 later this week as I am not even sure that you can do a complete restore to different hardware ??

Any advice or better solutions would be most appreciated!! :)

Simon