How to Clone Servers

Hello Lazy IT professionals!

So you are having to build a whole bunch of servers but don't want to build them individually.

Cloning is for You!

First here's what you will need.

• Hard Drive Duplicator Dock, You can find them by Google, or going to StarTech.com
• Your server
• Basic Hardware skills
• A willingness to do minimal work.
• 2 Hard Drives.
• A master drive in which to copy, ie, A previously built server, of same model / make.
• Master Hard Drive needs to be equal or lesser size to the drive you are about to copy from the master.

Example: In this tutorial we are using a Dell Optiplex XE, We have a pre-built master drive with windows 2003 server.

So you have your master HDD built with Server 2003 in this instance. Here is what you need to do next.

• Attach SATA cables to SATA 0 and SATA 1
• Attach Both HDD to each SATA and Power
• Setup RAID
• For a File Server I like to use a RAID 1 Mirror In case one hard drive fails the other Hard Drive will keep the machine up. Then all you have to do is replace the bad hard drive with a new one, and Bam, the data syncs and rebuilds.
• Name your Raid something you can remember.

You have the Raid Set up, now you are ready to begin the cloning process.

Here are the steps.

• Power the Machine off.
• Remove 1 of the HDDs
• Leave the other connected to the machine

On the duplicator you have 2 docking spots, depending on which one you bought. Either way each one should have a copy button.

• Place the Master Drive from the previous Server Build into the (Source) Slot on your Duplicator.
• Place the one drive from your cloning operation into the (Target) Slot on your duplicator.
• Make sure your duplicator is set to Copy.
• Wait for both HDD to power and cycle. Press Start.
• Depending on the speeds of your HDD, and the amount of Data, this can take anywhere from 20mins - 1 hour.
• After the clone is complete, Re-attach your newly cloned HDD to the Machine in which you are attempting to build. Check the RAID.
• If the RAID says Degraded, you are in bad shape or have a bad Drive.
• It Should Say Normal.
• Turn off your machine, and remove the other drive.
• Place the other Drive into the Target slot on the duplicator, with your master in the Source Slot.
• Press Start
• After it is complete, re-attach the drive to the machine.
• Fire up your machine, Check the RAID
• NORMAL is GOOD, DEGRADED is BAD. Rebuild can happen also, if so, open the OS and let it run.