I run a small server on my home network that has Windows Server 2008 R2 installed. If I wanted to move this windows installation to a completely new PC with better specs, what's the easiest way to do this? Can I simply swap the primary drive to the new machine? I'd hope that Windows would boot up and recognize the new hardware and install new drivers for everything.
I run a domain controller, DNS server, and I setup VPN on my server. I want all of these settings to be retained.
Best Answer
The proper way or the easy way?
The proper way is to do a fresh install of Windows Server on your new device, join it to the domain, promote it to DC, make it a GC, redirect DNS to it, then demote and remove the old server.
If you want the easy way, get a 2 week IT copy of ShadowProtect. Use that to image the server to new hardware.