Create easy method to alternate Server 2016 system drives

Question

My goal is to have alternating system drives (named even and odd) that I alternate at the 1st of every month.

My proposed initialization is to first build Server 2016 on both drives, meaning that the System partition on each drive will point to the C partition on its own drive. Then, all I have to do at the end of each month is to copy (restore) the current operational C partition to the "new" system drive, start operation with "new" system drive and use "old" system drive as hot standby until the first of the next month.

Question: For my Dell Poweredge 330, I start with 4 partitions: Reserved, Recovery, System, Primary. Does using the same first 3 partitions cause any problem?

Answer 1

Hi,

Thanks for posting on our forum!

Based on your descriptions, firstly, I guess the two Windows Server 2016 are VMs on your Dell Poweredge 330. Secondly, I may need more information about your storage setting, to gain a deeper understanding of your environment. So, can you send me the screenshots of your disk management that can show 4 paritions?

Thanks for your support!

BR,
Joan

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If the Answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Answer 2

My comment regarding answer from jiayaozhu:

My real goal is to create an OS backup drive that I can store offsite. Then, for any disaster, I simply replace the failed OS drive with my offsite backup and the server is restored. (No issue with Server's Database and Data drives.

My 1st thought was to install a new copy of server 2016 on the "backup drive" which does boot successfully, but then "copy" the the "C:\" partition from the original working drive giving me my offsite backup. Testing still in progress.

I find very little documentation on UEFI boot process which leads to my question:
If I successfully change the C partition on a bootable OS drive, will it still boot,

DISKPART> list part
Partition ### Type Size Offset

---

Partition 1 Reserved 128 MB 17 KB
Partition 2 Recovery 450 MB 129 MB
Partition 3 System 100 MB 579 MB
Partition 4 Primary 111 GB 679 MB