Approach to move multiple virtual machines SharePoint 2010 Farm

Question

The migration requires to move the SharePoint farm to another location (from a country to another). Since all servers are virtual servers, one approach is to copy all virtual machines to the new physical servers, then I figure out the following:

• After copy, change all virtual machines server name, because the actual farm will still running on the same network enviroment.

However, Is that the simpler approach, in order to keep all services application running up, as well all content databases?

Other option is farm backup, but require to build a new farm.

Answer 1

Moving the SharePoint farm from one domain to other, or moving from virtual to physical really not easy job.

I would prefer the Backup and restore appraoch. Build a new farm, then restore the farm backup.

Another approach is:

Install SharePoint on the new physical app servers and update it to the same patch level as the rest of the farm, join them to the farm and then activate the services you want to run on them. Then disconnect the old App servers from the farm.

Answer 2

I'd build a new farm too.

• Update to the same patch level as used in the current farm.
• Enable the same services
• Use the same functional accounts
• Set database to read-only
• Copy to the new farm and attach them there
• After checking logs and everything works fine, change DNS to the IP-Address of the new farm/web frontend

Simply copying the server images and renaming the hostnames will lead to problems! Don't do that!