I have a few 2008/ 2012 servers that I need to upgrade to Win2016. Nearly all of them follow the model of having the OS and the DATA partitions on separate data stores. None of them have any domain controller roles. In at least two cases, I want to avoid the down time to backup/copy a couple terabytes of data. I think I can do something like this:
- Create a new data store for the 2016 version of the VM
- Install Windows, get patches, etc, using a temporary server name (might be a good time to learn how to make a template!)
- Shutdown the old server
- Remove the data VMDKs from the old virtual machine
- Remove the old server name from AD
- Rename the NEW server to match the old. Update IP address data as needed. Reboot
- Confirm the name change took, add server to AD domain, shut down NEW server
- Attach data VMDKs to new server
- Power on new server, check that drive letters got assigned correctly. Check/recreate shares as needed.
- Remove the old server from inventory
In theory, I don't think I need to power down the new VM prior to adding the data VMDKs, but I'm a cautious fellow.
Did I miss any steps?