1. With VirtualBox chugging along, I’ve have developed super SysAdmin (systems administrator) powers, and created and destroyed dozens of Linux servers and desktop workstations using both Ubuntu and Red Hat operating systems. 

2. It takes over an hour to format an 8 gigabyte USB thumb drive in Windows 7. A quickformat will take just a couple of seconds. 

3. The Boss took a look at my old Linux books, (copyright 2002) and laughed a mirthless hollow laugh. “Those are really old books”.  I said, “yes, they are, but they happen to describe your really old operating systems.” 

4. The object of all of this virtual goodness is to upgrade the hardware on a currently production server that is around eight-years old. The problem is that the operating system, mySQL and PHP are equally old. Our idea was to transfer the existing production server, on to the new hardware, and then worry about upgrading, as we expect that some of the PHP will need to be rewritten. The problem is similar to the proverbial “change a tire on a car at 70 miles per hour”. To date, I’ve been working on several separate scenarios:

• Shut down the server, and do a bit-copy of the old system to the new system 
• Leave the server running and do a copy to the new system over the network.
• Create a new empty server with the old versions of the OS (Redhat 7) and mySQL (3.23). Dump the mySQL data off the old server and restore to the new server.