IT Management Suite

Okay here's the scenario.   We are rebuilding our NS due to hard drive issues and wanting to eventually take down the old server and rename the new server to the old server name and ip address.  This will be done after 7.5 SP 1 is installed.  How will this affect IIS and can it be transitioned smoothly.  Or should I just start our with a new name and repoint all my agents?

Is the DB on the same server?  Are you planning to migrate the data to the new server or start fresh?

If you are starting fresh, you'll want to keep the names separate so when agents move over they know they are on a new NS and don't try reporting status for policies which never existed on the new NS.  If you are migrating everything over and using the same DB, I'd create a DNS alias for the existing server, point all agents to the alias (using the targeted agent settings).  That way you can build the new NS with a separate name, get all data restored, and adjust the alias to point to the new server. 

One catch with using an alias is if you are using CEM or HTTPS, your certificates for the SMP must contain both the actual FQDN and the Alias FQDN in the certificate SAM.  You'd need to add the alias to your CEM gateway as well since that is the name agents will be looking for.  I suppose you could avoid these pitfalls by keeping the new server name the same but then you can't have both systems online at the same time.

I built our ITMS using an alias from day one exactly for this reason.  Nothing is refering to the actual server name.  So far I've not had the need to swap out the NS behind the scenes but I can say the alias has worked well.

Our existing DB is off box in a cluster.  We are moving the existing DB to the new server.  However, I was going to create a temp db to install everything under then change the DB to the existing DB in place.  We aren't using CEM or HTTPS as of yet.  However I was at the prompt to start the install and it was asking me to setup a cert.  Which I don't remember seeing in previous installs.  Once all settings have been made I was going to turn the old server change name and ip on the server and point to the old DB.  I just didn't want to jackup IIS with a namechange on the server.

I'd be too worried that somewhere down the line problems will occur f you try and change the name or IP address.

That's what I'm trying to avoid.  But I'm just concerned with the same database and everything not having the same NS name would cause an issue.

I'd rebuild your NS in place with the same Name, IP address and solutions as before over a weekend then upgrade it later.

If lets say hypothetically your NS blows up (with a seperate intact DB hosted off-box), if you rebuild the NS with the same name, IP, and point it too the old DB, will clients report in fine? CEM and HTTPS aside...

@MichaelCiv: Yes, clients would report to the new server but you would be missing anything that relied on the NS file system.  For instance, your software packages would still be defined SMP but all the underlying files would be gone which are stored in the software library (a directory on the NS).  OS Images would be another example.  I assume you could just restore those files to the new server. 

You may also have to do some work to resync the outstanding NSE events / inventory since portions of those are stored in the DB and on the filesystem.  Depending how the NS went down and for how long, there could be a LOT of these. I've seen a KB on that process.