I am looking for an easy way to migrate our servers shares, user and group accounts. Is there any alternative to securecopy?

I already tried robocopy but it won’t copy the shares and accounts.

t.

Another option that I find myself using quite often is dsquery/dsget/dsmod. These command line tools can be used to modify Active Directory objects and are particularly useful when you pipe the output of dsquery into dsmod (e.g., update home directories for everyone in a particular OU). I also use concatenation in Excel to generate batch files using dsmod.

I also wanted to comment on Robocopy. A couple advantages of Robocopy over some of the other tools are:
- Ability to use Backup rights to migrate data you don’t normally have access to
- Uses a couple different modes to try to copy open files
- Can automatically retry copying files for x times after waiting y minutes
- Very efficient when syncing files
- Can choose what NTFS metadata to copy (e.g., ACLs, Owner)
- Can throttle bandwidth usage so copying during business hours will not impact users
- Ability to sync deletions

This last one is why I use Robocopy most of the time. I can perform an initial sync of the data (which might take hours or days), then do a final sync just before cutting over to a new server. Even file deletions are synced and since only changes are synced, the final copy time is relatively short.

The command line is:
robocopy \\srv1\share \\srv2\share /E /LEV:2 /SEC /XF *.*

Dave.

Thanks

Regards

Thanks for the comment – I think the Swing Migration is a wonderful thing, but I try highlight free tools and methods whenever possible here at the back room tech. I did have a co-worker have a SBS 2003 migration bomb on him this weekend, so maybe he’ll be your next customer purchasing the Technician kit!

On another note, I received the Advanced Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices book for Christmas, and I am looking forward to reading your chapters on Disaster Recovery and Migration, where I see you mention in detail the Swing Migration.

Thanks again for your comments, hope to hear from you again soon.

Julie Smith

I want to thank Julie for mentioning SBSmigration.com in her comment above. I got pointed to this blog by someone else asking a question, and I was surprised that Julie therefore didn’t mention one of the tools that comes with the Technician Kit I offer: ShareMig. It does what is being discussed here quite elegantly.

The ShareMig tool is one of the tools in the Technician Kit, but the Technician Kit overall addresses a substantially larger scope of project than just data migration. I’ll explain ShareMig in just a moment, but I think it helps to get the larger picture context first.

The Kit is primarily a documentation solution to replace a DC/Exchange server that may also be a file server or Sharepoint or SQL server as typical for an SBS. The custom tools included do useful tasks such as I described below with Sharemig. The majority of the construction of a new server is related to the migration of the Active Directory, Exchange Server, and any other applications. Note that you will have to install the new server from scratch in order to preserve your domain as required. The technician Kit describes how you can build a new machine from scratch, preserve the domain, and have a cleaner new server than the one it replaces. More importantly, you can replace the server with one running different platform, versions, or combinations of applications.

The Technician Kit for $200 provides you with a license to use the Kit on as many different projects, servers, domains or customers as you want forever. In addition, the Kit provides you with the opportunity on your _first project_ to get unlimited support by email for 90 days. Therefore, you are not limited in the number of times you can use the kit or the tools, only in the number of projects you obtain prepaid for unlimited support. You are welcome to work independently on more projects, or you can come back to SBSmigration.com to obtain support separately paid by the hour, or with another project kit, or through options available to our subscribers.

To the main point on this blog thread, moving/restoring the data files from one server to another is only an element in a project. Most people wouldn’t buy a new car in order to get a spare tire and a scissors jack, but if you wanted ShareMig enough to buy the Technician Kit, I suppose that might be an option. It’s a lot less expensive than what was discussed as alternatives.

Regarding the specifics to move userfiles from one machine to the other, this is handled quite simply with the ShareMig a two step operation. Step one is restore the data with all NTFS permissions, step 2 is re-establish the shared folder resource definitions.

Step 1 is to use your preferred method to backup and restore the file/folder tree to a new machine. The most common approach is to use NT Backup to “backup to file” on a USB drive, and then restore it on the new machine partitions with the option to preserve all security. If you prefer drive imaging or some other method, that’s fine. (Note: In the larger context of how Swing Migration logic works, you can’t connect the two servers together for a direct file copy, so that doesn’t apply unless you wanted to do that twice…moving across external media like a USB drive.)

Step 2 is to use the ShareMig tool that comes with the Kit which you run once on the original server to create a pair of reference files. You then take those two reference files (they are trivial in size) plus the tool and run it again now on the new server. The tool will review the reference files and the data folder tree condition of the new server. It then will reestablish all the previously defined shared folder references while it validates that the path and location of the folders exists (what NT Backup created for you in the restore of the files). Sharemig produces audit logs of what it does, what shares already are defined, what shares can’t be created because the folder path doesn’t exist, etc. You can use it’s logs for historical documentation or troubleshooting.

Part of the ShareMig process is to intelligently restore the security ACLs without modification. That means you get exactly what it was before, ShareMig is automatically handling the practical steps of ensuring that you are not leaving shares out, changing ones that already were defined earlier in construction, or attempting to create a share to a phantom folder.

As for customization, if you want the new server to have different partition letters, or different paths for the shared folders, that’s not a big deal. One of the reference files is a text readable format (easily understood by humans) that you can edit anything in the paths, names, or descriptions you want. You can omit specific shares as well. It’s not complex, it’s not risky, you are editing a text file, not the registry and not a registery file export. All of this information is stored separately from the configuration file for the security (which itself is technically a binary .REG file). ShareMig does a far better job than what the MS KB identifies, but it uses similar logic. It’s an encapsulated VBscript file so it’s under 30K in size.

ShareMig is simple and reliable, it’s while not sold as a separate tool, it’s part of a normal project step in Swing Migration. If you are not using a Windows Domain for your servers, this solution is not likely your best answer unless the price and the tool match your needs. Just keep in mind that you must still have the same domain in order for the ACLs to have any meaning.

- Jeff Middleton SBS-MVP
YCST@SBSmigration.com