We have PE 1950 with PERC 5/i with two 73 GB SAS drives in a RAID 1. Windows Server 2003 (non-R2) with critical application Primavera Contract Manager (old version from 2010). We needed an outside consultant to set up Contract Manager (CM) and create special forms for it. Need to keep CM running for foreseeable future. No budget.
I am concerned that some hardware may fail in PE 1950. I'd like to virtualize server but it needs to be upgraded from Windows Server 2003 (non-R2) to Windows Server 2003 R2 to be compatible with Windows 2012 R2 Server requirements. I have software license for the 2003 R2 upgrade. However, I am concerned that if something goes wrong with the CM software because of the R2 upgrade, I may not be able to go back to a working system.
We have two more 73 GB SAS drives, same model as those installed in server. I am thinking about using the RAID 1 rebuild process to produce a complete cloned set of the existing server drives. 2 questions: (1) Doable? (2) Best way?
Thinking I'd do this: (1) Shut down server; (2) Pull 2nd drive OUT; (3) Boot up server and go into OMSA (OpenManage Server Administrator) and hopefully there will be an option to rebuild RAID 1 onto 1 of the unused SAS drives we have; (4) After rebuild, repeats step 1-3 using 2nd unused SAS drive; (5) Shut down server and hopefully boot from the 2 "new" SAS drives - if all goes well, upgrade this setup to 2003 R2.
Advice? Thank you.