overdrivemachines wrote:
I think cloning the hard disk from server1 to server 2 is a good idea. What do I use to clone the servers and is it possible to clone hard disk from server1 to server2 remotely?
You cannot clone a disk that is in use, so the best recommendation would be to boot into a Linux based live disk, run the appropriate dd commands to copy the hard disk to a file on a remote server or external HD, then boot the same way on the other machine and copy the entire image over the current disk images.
And example of dd command would be:
To copy the contents of /dev/sda into the image file disk1.img
"dd if=/dev/sda of=disk1.img bs=512"
To Copy the image disk1.img over the disk in /dev/sda
"dd if=disk1.img of=/dev/sda bs=512"
The breakdown of the command is simple:
if - means input file
of - means output file
bs - means block size, I choose 512 bits at a time to make it faster
I know there are tools that allow remote cloning, but I have not used them.