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I have remote dedicated Windows Server hosted on Hetzner Online. I need to migrate the box as-is to the new dedicated server, while I will have access to both. I do not have BIOS access, but I can boot Hetzner Rescue system from their internal network which is a "Linux live environment". I can also boot FreeBSD and vKVM. I want to somehow create byte copy of the hard drive of the now live system (by booting one of the "rescue systems" and upload it somewhere) and then boot one of these rescue systems on the new machine, download and apply the copy to the new system drive.

Old and new server are the same hardware except for the drives and amount of RAM.

What I need is recommendations for the tools I could use for this and other tips.

Jay Michaud
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Arcanum
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  • Try to disk backup and restore. – Alexander Tolkachev Jul 11 '17 at 19:40
  • Something similar already was here, it may help. BTW, that's why virtualizing infrastructure is so crucial, it would be much easier to migrate. https://serverfault.com/questions/720001/moving-the-windows-server-from-one-computer-to-another – Stuka Jul 14 '17 at 14:39

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If the hardware is identical (i.e. same storage controller) and the new disks are bigger this is rather simple:

  1. Boot both machines in Hetzner's rescue system
  2. for each drive in the old box run dd if=/dev/sdX bs=4k | ssh new-server dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4k
  3. wait for the command to complete (probably takes ages)
  4. reboot the new server
  5. connect to the new server by whatever means to update the IP configuration (that has also been cloned from the old server)
Andreas Rogge
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