Rackshack performed some tests on my Ensim Pro box last night and informed me that they would like to replace my hard drive. I have a second 80GB hard drive in the system and I am using The Ensim Pro Appliance backup to FTP to the second hard drive.

My question is this: If Rackshack replaces my primary hard drive, what is the best way to get the server up and running again? I have plenty of space on my second hard drive, only using 5GB and my primary hard drive is only using about 5GB. I could completely copy the primary hard drive to the secondary. I have alot of mods from this forum such as squirrelmail, php upgrade, sim, apf, etc. I want to preserve all of these and get the sites up and running as fast as possible?

Any suggestions? Rackshack said they would leave the original hard drive in place but the tech might not have known there was already a second hard drive in there so I don't know if there is enough room.

Any guidance on the best we to replace this faulty primary hard drive with Ensim Pro?

Thanks all.

There are a lot of posts about how to do this... But basically, you have a few options...

1) Make backups, then after replaced restore to disk 1.
2) Make your 2nd drive bootable (Here) and ask RS to make your 2nd drive primary, and replace your 2nd drive.
3) If RS wont do #2, then make a bootable backup, then just copy things from disk 2 to disk 1. Or reverse the script to make your 1st drive bootable (don't recommend).

But, search is your friend as many people have done this before (especially people moving from server to server, which similar to what you are doing).

I've definitely searched the forum and I see alot of info on how to use various scripts to restore sites. I don't see any sure-fire ways to restore all my custom settings. I was hoping there was a way to backup the os including all the applications and settings such as ensim, ssl certs, custom httpd.conf file, custom RPMs, etc.

From what I can read my only course of action is to have RS replace the hard drive, patch the new hard drive, re-install all the RPMs, copy over a few files that I know have changes such as httpd.conf, apf deny lists, etc. and then restore all the sites using Ensim Pro Restore.

This is going to take a long, long time. I was hoping for a solution like "use xyz to backup your entire primary hard drive to your secondary hard drive, then when RS replaces your primary hard drive, just run zyx and it will restore your files completely."

Anything like that out there? Since I was going to purchase another server in about a month should I just purchase one now and then move all the sites? That would work fine for most but about 10 sites have databases so that will be a hassle.

I could sure use some help. I'm willing to pay for anybody experienced in this with Ensim Pro, RS, Etc.

Thanks to anybody that can point me in the right direction.

Have RS mount your new harddrive and then your old one as a second one. Then ask them to boot into console mode and use dd to duplicate your old drive to your new one. Seems reasonable if they are replacing it for a hardware failure.

Thanks for the advice. I have asked them via the trouble ticket I have open. We'll see what their response is. I hope it is favorable.

RS Tech Support recommends against using dd because it might be copying a bad hard drive onto a new hard drive. Hmmm.

I really don't want to have RS install a hard drive with Ensim 3.1.x, then have to upgrade to 3.5 then upgrade all the Ensim patches, then apply all the extra RPMs from this forum, then restore all the sites.

Will dd backup and restore the core os files? Do I need to shut down any services before I start to ensure files are copied correctly? Can anybod provide some detailed instructions? I'll probably wait too long and my drive will crash.

Thanks

dd copies the harddrive block for block. So yeah, if you have bad blocks they could get copied over. :-