Moving current GSS implementation to a new hard drive on the same hosting server

Products

• Ghost Solution Suite

Issue/Introduction

The server where your Ghost Solution Suite (GSS) Console resides is running out of space. It is down into the MBs making it very hard to use. You have tried everything in your power to clean it all out, but it has not been enough. At this time what you would like to do is either purchase a bigger drive and move the GSS Console to the new drive or move the Console completely to another machine.

What is the best way to safely backup everything you need to be able to transfer it?

What you would like to accomplish is to:

• Back up Ghost including all of the files needed.
• Replace that drive completely with a larger one.
• Restore all Ghost Console to the new drive.

Is this possible?

Environment

GSS 3.3 RUx

Resolution

Let us share what we have seen as more common approach by other customers.

For those that were running out of space in their System drive (since they didn't have another allocated drive for their GSS implementation), it was very hard for them to clean up the drive because the OS was constantly consuming the disk space with other processes. So, there are two approaches from where you can decide according to your needs:

1. Migrate to a new GSS Server where they setup their disks allocation according to what they needed. In their case, C:\ for OS and default applications and E:\ (for example) just for GSS implementation. Also, it was a good approach for them as a way to update their OS, add more resources and have the most recent GSS version installed
   You can refer to the following KB article for what to consider for your migration:
   
   KB 248914 "Migrating Ghost Solution Suite to new server"
   
   
2. For those that decided just to add more space by adding a new hard drive, if the reason why they were running out of space was because too many/large image files, they just added the new drive, moved the images to the new drive, and use "mklink" command to map the new drive so GSS could keep using the previous references.
   
   KB 179207 "How to use mklink to store images in an alternative location"
   KB 178891 "Store images at different network location by mapping an additional drive in Ghost solution suite 3.x"
   
   
3. If the issue of the space is because other applications consuming the disk space, they just re-installed GSS on the same server but now pointing the installation to go to the new drive. You can follow this KB:
   
   KB 163068 "How to Uninstall/Reinstall Ghost Solution Suite 3.x"
   
   Few things to consider if you decide to keep the GSS server on the same hosting server but just move it to a new drive:
   
   
   1. Install GSS on that new hard drive,
   2. If the images are in a different drive already, just point to it (the database already has that reference, since it is not changing, nothing special is needed),
   3. If the database is in an off-box SQL server, you just need to point to it when you are installing GSS,
   4. If the database in on-box and in the same hard drive, you could just leave it there or install/move SQL server on the new hard drive and move the database to that drive
   5. OR If SQL server is on box, you could backup just in case the GSS database and then install SQL Server in the new hard drive and use the backup copy if you want,
   6. All references of your computers and jobs/tasks will be available when you connect to the database,
   7. The physical path to the images should match that of the jobs. Just check that when you are ready to deploy an image.
   8. If you are using driversdb then copy that folder to the new drive and any preboot drivers for bootwiz:
      
      
      DriversDB is located under ...\Program Files (x86)\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\DriversDB
      
      Since these are drivers used for DeplyAnywhere, these will need to be imported again once they are copied over. So copy them somewhere else then import, then they will end up in deployment server\driversdb
   9. If you are using PXE, then you will need to build new configurations
   10. then, after GSS is installed, you can copy whatever files (outside of the standard installation files for GSS, like drivers) that are custom to the new location:
       
       You can move the files under:
       C:\Program Files (x86)\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\Bootwiz\platforms\Winpe11\x64\Drivers
       
       C:\Program Files (x86)\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\Bootwiz\platforms\Winpe10\x64\Drivers
       
       If you have custom drivers, there would be a folder called CUSTOM in there. That is where all the user imported drivers are:
       C:\Program Files (x86)\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\Bootwiz\platforms\Winpe11\x64\Drivers\custom\drivers