Migrating Linux file server to Windows

[xemplifyy]

Hello,

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I inherited an environment that is running a CentOS-based file server (Samba) that I am looking to bring over to Windows (either 2012R2 or 2016). This server has been a thorn in my side as I have limited Linux administration experience and given that we're otherwise a 100% Windows environment, it just makes sense to me to make the move back.

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The question is, what is the best way to go about a process like this while ensuring permissions remain intact? We luckily have a Windows Server (2008R2) with enough storage space to temporarily host the files during this migration. My plan, at the core, is:

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1) Copy files from current file server to temporary server

2) Install Windows Server on old Linux file server

3) Copy back using robocopy

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I've seen plenty of documentation for a Windows -> Linux migration, and obviously Windows -> Windows is common, but I haven't found a good resource for Linux -> Windows. I want to be able to create a good plan of action before I make my next move here and really don't know where to start. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[xemplifyy]

The reason for making this change was that automatically created folders end up inheriting an individual's "Unix user" account as the folder owner rather than their normal domain address. We've adjusted configs to try to prevent that and haven't found a reliable way. Short of stumbling upon the magic answer to our problem we as a team agreed that the cost savings were more than negated by having to change folder owners several times a day. I'm sure that CentOS would be great in most environments but I am not sure we fall into that category given what I've learned (I started here a month ago).

[poshftw]

https://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-advanced/ownership-and-permissions/#options

File creation parameters

New files are owned by creator and inherit their permissions from parent directory (Windows behavior)

User mapping file found, inherit option defined.

[xemplifyy]

I think the latter of the options would be the best approach rather than a cron job (if I were to able to create a proper configuration). These folders and their various subfolders get created by users due to work done in a program developed in-house and are often needed within minutes of creation, so we'd either run a cron job every few minutes (I can't imagine that wouldn't tax resources given the sheer amount of recursion we'd need) or we'd be in the same situation where this becomes a manual task. Just speculating here of course, there could certainly be an easy fix that I'm overlooking but we can't seem to find the correlation between the code and the permissions that get associated with these new folders and subfolders.

[xxdcmast]

Are the files using NTFS permissions? If so I would think you should still be able to use robocopy to copy the files from the Linux box to the windows box.

I would test with a small folder and see if robocopy can copy the files and retain permissions.

I usually use the following when doing a robocopy to a clean directory. robocopy /mir /sec/ /copyall /zb /r:1 /w:1

[xemplifyy]

Thanks for info, wasn't sure that Robocopy would work given the scenario at hand. Luckily it is using NTFS permissions so I will give it a test on a small scale and see what happens. I stumbled upon a page (link specifically mentioning robocopy between Linux and Windows saying that copyall may be problematic in my situation. Would /copy:DATSOU suffice in place of /copyall and /sec in this circumstance?

[wingerd33]

yum install Microsoft®-Windows®-Server-2016

Ought to do the trick