taking a drive from 7825-I1 running 4.0 and putting it in another MCS serve

Roman Rodichev · ‎10-22-2009

Is it possible to take one of the two drives from the 7825-I1 server running CM4.0 and put it in another MCS server (not necessarily 7825-I1) and expect the server to come up and CM to work? If so, can i do it on an -H and -Ix or only -Ix?

Jonathan Schulenberg · ‎10-22-2009

This is a huge no on many levels:

-Windows drivers.

-Firmware and hardware utilities.

-Cisco platform customizations.

Confirm that the version is supported on the target MCS model and then install from scratch. If you are trying to move hardware you can do a BARS backup and restore (same version only) to the new server.

Roman Rodichev · ‎10-23-2009

Well, thank you for the obvious answer to a stupid question :) I'm wondering if anyone has actually tried it. I realize that some drivers won't work, but it could potentially come up as long as network interfaces are detected and drivers could be reinstalled. Has anyone actually tried this?

Here's my problem. Customer has one server on 7825-I1 running 4.0. They want to upgrade to 6.x/7.x with minimum downtime. They don't want to buy a server, and I have a couple of 7825-H1s laying around. They bought one extra HDD. They can't keep -H1. I thought about taking one drive from -I1 and putting it into test -H1 server, and add second new drive into -H1. Install 4.0, restore BARS, upgrade to 4.1, export DMA, install 6.x/7.x, import DMA. Two problems I see with that:

- I can't move those two drives from -H1 to -I1. I can't have the drivers issue on a production server even if it works. Plus I'm more confident in troubleshooting Windows drivers issues (on 4.0) than UCOS drivers issues (on 6.x/7.x).

- Doing DRS backup on -H1 and restoring to -I1 would involve an outage while I install 6.x/7.x on the -I1. And in addition, I believe I will have some problems with licensing pertaining to different MAC addresses on two servers. When I get new upgrade license key I need to give -H1's mac to the licensing team, and I also need to ask them to reissue me a new DLU license file based on DMA's export and -H1's mac address. Some convincing might be necessary. And then I need to ask them for the upgrade license file based on -I1's mac address. I guess that would work, but an outage is still needed.

So I thought, maybe, I could bring up the existing system on the test -H1 server by moving one of the drives from -I1 to -H1. This way I could use -I1 for a clean install and DMA import with proper mac addresses. I realize the drivers issue, and I would have probably answered to my question the same way, but I wanted to know if anyone actually tried it.

Otherwise... do you know any other clever workarounds?