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We have a situation where we have an aging Windows 2003 File Server Cluster that we'd like to move to a standalone Windows Server 2008 R2 VM that resides in our Hyper-V R2 installation. We see no need to keep the Clustering as Hyper-V is now providing our Failover/Redundancy. Usually, in a standalone file server migration we migrate the data, preserving NTFS permissions and then export the sharing permissions from the registry and import them on the new server. This does not appear possible in this instance, as the 2003 cluster stores the sharing permissions quite differently. My question is, how would one perform this type of migration? Is it even possible? My current lead is the File Server Migration Toolkit, however I can find no information on the net about migrating from cluster to standalone, only the opposite. Please help.

UPDATE: We ended up getting the data copied over (permissions intact), but had to recreate the shares manually by hand. It was a bit of a pain but it did in the end work out.

Tatas
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  • present the lun from the w2k3 server to the hyper-v host then do a pass-through to a guest vm. I'd create a script to export the share info then jut play it back on the new server. – tony roth May 09 '11 at 14:14
  • Unfortunately the old server was in a remote site with DAS storage. Our HyperV vm system is in our datacenters and uses a different storage system. – Tatas May 09 '11 at 18:24

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Use DFS to replicate the existing shares to the new system and then remove the old server as a target/member when the data has transferred. Once it finishes the initial sync, you can disable referrals to the old server to make sure nobody is updating the 'old' location before removing it.

In response to 'we see no need to keep clustering', you will take a hit when the system reboots for Windows Updates, etc. I don't know how important that is to you, just mentioning it.

sinping
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  • Can you add a Cluster as a DFS member? Also can you have Windows 2003 and 2008 R2 servers be in the same DFS root together? I don't have much experience actually using DFS so I don't know the limitations. – Tatas May 09 '11 at 18:29
  • when you say you have hyper-v now providing failover etc do you mean its a clustered hyper-v host? – tony roth May 09 '11 at 18:46
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    You can, you just have to do it through the cluster resource manager. 2003 and 2008 can co-exist so long as the DFS root is in 2003 mode, which it probably is for you since you are just now upgrading to 2008. – sinping May 09 '11 at 19:06