Sharepoint Adding a new web front-end

Question

I'm asking the question to avoid disaster for when I actually do the work.

I'm planning to Add a new SP 2010 Web front end to my farm and decomission the old one.

My question is basically the following:

How do I transfer the Central Admin site from being hosted on the old server to the new server?

Is this a automated process?

Also, do I need to worry about reinstalling my custom WSPs on the newly added web front end?

Is there anything else I need to worry about or take care of?

This is a production environment, so no mistakes allowed. Thanks for prospective answers or suggestions.

Answer 1

(1) How do I transfer the Central Admin site from being hosted on the old server to the new server?

You do that via the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard. Remove the CA from the old server, then add it (again via the wizard) to the new one.

Here it is explained in a little more detail: http://kirkbarrett.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/how-to-change-central-admin-host-in-sharepoint-2010/

(2) Do I need to worry about reinstalling my custom WSPs on the newly added web front end?

No, you don't. The solutions are uploaded to the farm, not locally to a WFE. Exceptions apply to GAC deployments or web.config changes. You should check for that.