Replace hardware Windows 2012 R2 server with VM?

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RichTJ99

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Sep 12, 2013
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Hi,

I have been kicking back & forth on if i should get rid of a Windows 2012 R2 essentials server to virtualize it on my existing freenas server. The box currently sits on an older intel I5 & I use it primarily as a backup module for my windows PC's. The server initiates a bare metal backup of each box nightly.

It has a 3TB internal server backup and a 4TB drive for network storage. I cant help thinking I can get all the functionality within a VM on the freenas box.

The biggest concern i have is if I have a hardware problem on the VM itself. I was curious if anyone has done anything similar?

Thanks,
Rich
 

anodos

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iXsystems
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Mar 6, 2014
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Hi,

I have been kicking back & forth on if i should get rid of a Windows 2012 R2 essentials server to virtualize it on my existing freenas server. The box currently sits on an older intel I5 & I use it primarily as a backup module for my windows PC's. The server initiates a bare metal backup of each box nightly.

It has a 3TB internal server backup and a 4TB drive for network storage. I cant help thinking I can get all the functionality within a VM on the freenas box.

The biggest concern i have is if I have a hardware problem on the VM itself. I was curious if anyone has done anything similar?

Thanks,
Rich
I ran a server 2012r2 VM in vbox for about a year. It ran fairly stable-ish, but I was happy to switch out of the fisher-price hypervisor at the end.

What backup program are you using? Sometimes it makes more sense to just have a default system image and rsync your data (rather than doing "bare-metal backups").
 

RichTJ99

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Sep 12, 2013
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384
Hi,

At this point the box does two things:

1. Cif file sharing (which can be moved to Freenas)
2. Client backups.

Windows 2012 R2 Essentials is an easy to use 'server' software which has client software which initiates a nightly incremental backup. Once it is set the client/server will handle the backup with no user intervention.

The restore can be done via a USB thumb drive (or CD) which will restore the data over the network. Again easy to use & perfect for a small 10 user setup.

Most of the time this server sits idle, except for the backups. If I could get rid of the physical box that would be OK.

Thanks,
Rich
 

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