My organization has a farm with 3 servers, 1 WFE, 1 APP and 1 DB. These are all VMs and we want to add a new WFE server to it. What is the best strategy here? Should we start from scratch by installing OS, SharePoint etc. OR can we make a clone of the existing WFE. Below are the services currently running in the WFE server.
Any suggestion will be appreciated.
First of all, clonning SharePoint Farm components is not supported by Microsoft.
But to save some time you can clone existing WFE, put it offline (Disconnect-SPConfigurationDatabase) to not interfere with current Farm, remove all Application Pools and Sites in IIS, remove SharePoint Logs, do SysPrep and then connect it to Farm with different name.
I recommend you do fresh install (OS,SP,Updates), but do not connect to Farm, then do SysPrep and save this image for future use (clonnable).
Also you should check AutoSPInstaller project, it's awesome for Enterprise Farm setup, also good to prepare new nodes to join Farm.
There is a detailed article on this topic:
Add a Web or application server to the farm (SharePoint Server 2010)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261752%28v=office.14%29.aspx
In a nutshell, you do create it from scratch. There is no way to clone.
