Moving Revit Projects to New Server

[TroyGates]

I just finished moving all the company's project files from one server to another that has a lot more capacity. After moving all the projects I remapped the same drive letter from the old server to the new server. Revit central files all broke in the process. After opening a few projects it became apparent that Revit ignores drive mappings and uses UNC pathing instead. So instead of a seamless process for my users, they all had to go through the process of opening each central file, doing a saveas over itself, and making it a new central file. They received many alerts along the way about links not being found, etc. We are lucky and have less than 20 projects actively current in Revit, but what if we had 100 or more. Talk about wasting time, we would have wasted lots of time opening and saving each and every central file.

I don't know why Revit uses UNC instead of drive mappings, but it sure made it difficult this morning when I was hoping that the users wouldn't even know I spent the weekend moving projects from one server to another.

[Wes Macaulay]

How did you get away with this anyway? Do you have a logon script? Otherwise all the mapped drives would still point to the same UNC path anyway.

I suppose you could have renamed your old server and given the new server the old server's name...

[dhurtubise]

Thats the whole point of using map drive instead of UNC path.
That is, IMHO, a really sensitive issue that should be looked after.

[Wes Macaulay]

In some offices drive mapping is done differently in different departments; so I guess UNC was a safe bet except for situations like this!

[dhurtubise]

What do you mean by done differently ?

[cphubb]

Good to know as we are in the process of upgrading our server. What is the recommended process for moving a central file from one server to another? I would like to hear from the factory on this issue.
Also Wes if Revit is using UNC then it does not matter what "letter" you use Revit will only be stuck on the \\server\share path, it is really easy to change the "X" drive to a new server using batch files (a common practice) or active directory.

[dhurtubise]

Maybe Distributed File System could work that around ?
Any word on that factory ?

[Danny Polkinhorn]

You could use the same server name for the new server. Obviously, this isn't ideal and adds more work to the migration, but it is possible. I think it would be easier to migrate the central files, unless you had a network admin that could baby-sit the server process.

[TroyGates]

We use a logon script to map drive letters for employees. When I setup the new server I just transfered all the folders from the share on the old server to a share on the new server. I transferred roughly 500GB of project files. After transferring, we changed the drive letter from original share to the new server share. We've done this a few times over the last several years. This is the first time we had Revit projects in addition to all of our Autocad projects.

This is what we did to get central files back online:
1. Open the central file, choose Save As, under options make sure it's still selected to be the central file, then save it over the top of itself.
2. Open your working file, when it opens it will say it cannot find the central file, click ok and finish opening the file.
3. Go to File/Save As, and in the 'Save to Central' dialog, browse back to the central file and select it. Then save.

[Steve_Stafford]

This is what we did to get central files back online:
1. Open the central file, choose Save As, under options make sure it's still selected to be the central file, then save it over the top of itself.
2. Open your working file, when it opens it will say it cannot find the central file, click ok and finish opening the file.
3. Go to File/Save As, and in the 'Save to Central' dialog, browse back to the central file and select it. Then save.Just to offer my "worry wart" view, I don't overwrite existing central files. I only create new files so Revit is forced to create new supporting folders. I can't prove that it is bad to overwrite a central or local file as you have but let's just say I'm a bit too cautious? I also create new local files from the central and never overwrite these local files either.

I do know that if you place a file, of your own making, in one of these supporting folders, that after overwriting the central, the file will still be there. That makes me nervous about what else might have been left there.

Since the only people who can definitively say whether this is bad or not are those who write the code and spec for this process, I'll defer to their advice. Till I hear otherwise I'll keep being cautious.

Fwiw, I rename the central file that has been moved as well as the folders to match before opening it to set up the new central on the new server. Since Revit will complain that it has been moved anyway it doesn't really matter that is has a new name now too. Now I can reuse the original central file name for the new file.

Also, casually changing the file name of a central file will cause this little "dance" as well. So I usually recommend that before a project goes "central" the team decides where and what name will be used so it can "stay put and stay named". Not unlike folks randomly renaming xref'd files in a large project really.

[janunson]

Seams strange to me that the central file cares where it's located in the first place. It's the working files that should care where the central file is... no?

Resaving the central file is just changing the path name it contains so that it knows it's located UNC-wise to match it's current path... something that i just don't see why it's necessary in the firstplace, but certainly not changing anything in the file that might break it, i'd think.

[ABSaunders]

We are having the same issue. We have re-saved the central, and repathed the links. The issue we are having now is that all of our standards, families and templates were on the server that has changed names. We changed these paths in the .ini file, but this has had no effect. If we try and access a new family, or do any kind of 'save as' operation it takes 10-15mins before Revit gives up looking for the old server and gives you the option of navigating to a new location.

Any ideas? The last resort is reinstalling Revit, as these paths seem to be imbedded within the program somwhere.

Anton

[Scott H MacKenzie]

This is still the case with Revit Archicture 2011. Revit is more concerned with how your drive letter is mapped, than to what the drive is mapped to.

For instance. If your central file was created in a drive that was mapped via an IP address such as \\192.168.1.102\Projects, and your computer is mapped to that same drive letter via \\Server-F01\Projects, (to the same exact server and folders), when you browse to the central file, Revit will not open the Create New Local box for you. You will need to fix the drive map accordingly, or browse to the file via the original path directly.

[patricks]

I would like some more info on this as well, since we're planning to upgrade our server in the near future (5 years and just now nearing the ~250GB capacity) and we will likely delegate the old server to DHCP, domain controller, FTP server, that sort of thing.

We also use a login.bat script that maps drive letters on everyone's machine when they log on. However when saving to a Central file, Revit lists the central model location as \\server\aerc\2011 Projects\Project Name\... and so on. The "aerc" folder is a shared folder on the server's C:\ drive, and is mapped as the Z:\ drive on all machines.

We also have our archived data stored on an external HDD that shows up as drive E: on the server, and is mapped as the Y:\ drive on all machines. I'll likely just connect that to the new server and set it up the same way as the E drive.

Now, we plan to move EVERYTHING that we normally use and store (stored in the shared folders that show up as mapped drives) to the new machine. So could we, or should we, rename the current server to like "Server Old" and name the new machine as "server", and if so would that keep all the file locations happy?

I'm kind of in charge of network and IT stuff around here even though I have no formal IT training. I'll probably have to get our IT consultant in on some of this when the time comes to order and set up a new server.