4 products that transfer data between servers
Whether consolidating file servers is part of your plan to trim management overhead or part of your strategy to migrate to Windows 2000, you have your work cut out for you. You need to copy data to your new servers, recreate shares on the new servers, and reset permissions on the data. If you also want to move user profiles, you need to update your users' accounts to point to the new profile locations.
These tasks are time-consuming, but tools exist to make the job easier. The Windows 2000 Magazine Lab tested four server-consolidation products: Aelita Software's Aelita Server Consolidation Wizard 5.63, FastLane Technologies' DM/Consolidator 2.6.2, NetIQ's Server Consolidator 2.0, and Small Wonders Software's Secure Copy 2.0.
Test Configuration
To evaluate each product's features and usability, I consolidated three source servers' shares, user profiles, and data to one server. First, I tested the products using a Windows NTequipped target server, then I retested them with a Win2K-equipped system. For source servers, I used two NT servers to store individual users' roaming profiles and one NT file server to store shares. I arranged the shared folders' permissions to simulate a typical corporate user environment. For target servers, I used newer and more powerful computers with more available disk space than the NT source servers. I consolidated to these servers individually to test how the products worked with the different OSs; none of the products consolidated more efficiently or effectively to one OS than to the other. I configured all the servers as file servers because the server consolidation products I tested aren't meant to consolidate domain controllers (DCs) or application servers.
To test how the products copy permissions, I created several domain user accounts and global groups on the source servers. I set the share and folder permissions to correlate with these domain user accounts and global groups. I also created a few local groups on the file servers. I then set up a few client computers and configured each to use a domain user account to log on.
Server Consolidation Wizard, DM/Consolidator, and Server Consolidator include console programs that you can install on any computer with network access to the source and target servers. In testing these three products, I used another computer on the network—a Win2K Server computer in my office—to drive the consolidation processes. I installed the products' console programs on the Win2K Server computer. You set up and manage consolidation jobs from the computer on which you install the console program. However, I/O passes between only the source and target computers to save both time and network bandwidth. As you step through job setups, these three products install agent software, which processes the consolidation jobs' I/O. Server Consolidation Wizard installs the agent only on one server (i.e., the server that you want to process the job); the other two products install agents on all servers involved in consolidation.
Secure Copy doesn't offer agent software. I installed this product on my target server to avoid introducing a third point in the copying process. This installation choice kept I/O between source and target servers and conserved bandwidth.