As I said earlier, there is no single approach to how
infrastructure migration projects should be planned and executed.
However, there are some best practices that apply in various degrees
to the different scenarios discussed earlier, and from these one can
identify some of the key steps that should be involved in any
migration process. I’ll briefly focus on providing some guidance for
the following four steps, which are common to most infrastructure
migration projects:
-
Pilot testing
-
Assessment
-
Server migration
-
Role migration
Note that to help you use the information in the upcoming
sections, some of it is presented in the form of a series of questions
that can be used as the basis for creating worksheets for implementing
your migration project.
Pilot testing involves more than just installing the software
and playing around with it. Instead, you should start by creating a
test plan that defines the scope and objectives of the testing you
want to perform. You should also define a testing methodology that
describes the architecture of your test environment, your testing
tools and techniques, and the type of automation you plan on using
for your testing. You then need to identify the resource you need to
perform your testing on, and establish a schedule for performing
your various tests. Finally, you should have a process for
evaluating the results of your testing to see whether the objectives
you set have been achieved or not.
The following are some key questions that need to be addressed
during pilot testing of Windows Server 2012:
-
Why are we pilot testing Windows Server 2012?
-
Who will be performing the testing?
-
What training will the testers need before they can
perform their testing?
-
What are the specific objectives of our test
process?
-
What scenarios will we be using as the basis for
performing our testing?
-
What roles and features do we plan on testing?
-
How will we test each of these roles and features?
-
What hardware will we require to perform our tests?
-
What additional software will we require to perform our
tests?
-
Will we be using any scripts or automation as part of the
test process?
-
Where will we set up our test environment?
-
How will we ensure that our test environment will not
affect our production environment?
-
What is the schedule for performing our testing?
-
How will we record our results for later analysis and
evaluation?
Assessment involves determining the readiness of your
organization’s infrastructure, hardware, applications, and personnel
for migration to Windows Server 2012. Although some of this will be
examined in more detail in the next lesson, here are some of the key
questions that need to be addressed as part of the assessment
process:
-
Have you inventoried all the various hardware in your
environment?
-
Do you have any tools for performing an inventory of your
infrastructure?
-
Is your existing server hardware capable of running
Windows Server 2012?
-
Is your existing server hardware capable of supporting the
various roles and features of Windows Server 2012 you plan to
deploy in your environment?
-
Will your existing storage hardware work with Windows
Server 2012?
-
Is your network infrastructure ready for Windows Server
2012?
-
Are your various network appliances (for example,
firewalls, VPN gateways, and so on) capable of interoperating
with Windows Server 2012?
-
If you plan on deploying DirectAccess, do your network
infrastructure and appliances fully support Internet Protocol
version 6 (IPv6)? And does your Internet Service Provider (ISP)
support IPv6?
-
Have you inventoried all the various operating systems and
applications in your environment?
-
Are there any operating systems or applications present in
your environment that have compatibility issues with Windows
Server 2012?
-
Will you be virtualizing any of your existing operating
systems or applications on Hyper-V hosts running Windows Server
2012?
-
Have you inventoried the server roles on each of the
servers of your infrastructure?
-
Are there any considerations with regard to virtualizing
any of the server roles currently running on your servers or
migrating these roles into the cloud?
-
Have you assessed your budget to ensure you have
sufficient funding to purchase any hardware or software needed
for your migration?
-
Have you assessed the potential cost savings and return on
investment (ROI) your organization can achieve by migrating to
Windows Server 2012?
-
Are your IT staff members ready for the migration? Do they
need any additional training?
A server migration can take several different paths, depending
on the migration scenario you decide to implement. The choices you
make concerning the migration process can be dictated by various
factors, including cost, timeframe, the topology of your
organization, the complexity of your infrastructure, and the server
roles you currently have deployed in your environment. Some of the
key questions to address concerning the server-migration process
include the following:
-
Do you have a rollback plan in place in case something
goes wrong with the migration?
-
Have you performed a full system backup of the servers
you’ll be migrating?
-
Which of the following method or methods will you be using
for migrating your servers?
-
In-place upgrade, which keeps the current hardware and
upgrades the current server operating system to Windows
Server 2012. If you follow this approach, make sure you are
aware of the supported upgrade paths for your existing
server operating systems.
-
Refresh, which keeps the current hardware, saves the
state information (operating system and application
settings) of the current installation, wipes the hardware to
remove the current operating system, performs a clean
install of Windows Server 2012, and restores the
state.
-
Replace, which saves the state of the current
installation to a network location, retires the current
hardware, performs a clean install of Windows Server 2012 on
new hardware, and restores the state.
-
New computer, which involves either deploying Windows
Server 2012 yourself on bare-metal hardware or purchasing
preconfigured server systems from your vendor and further
configuring the server as desired.
-
Have you acquired and learned how to use tools such as
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) and System Center
Configuration Manager (SCCM), which can be used to perform
server migrations?
-
Will you be migrating any physical servers into virtual
environments? If so, you might need System Center Virtual
Machine Manager (VMM) or other tools for performing the
physical-to-virtual (P2V) migrations of your server
workloads.
-
Will you be migrating any servers running operating
systems that are out-of-lifecycle, such as Windows 2000 Server,
that might require special procedures such as migrating to an
intermediate operating system before migrating to Windows Server
2012?
-
Will you be migrating any servers across architectures?
For example, migrating a server running Windows Server 2003 x86
to Windows Server 2012?
-
Have you developed plans for migrating the roles on each
of your servers? Role migration should be planned concurrently
with server migration. See the next section for more information
on this topic.
-
Have you developed plans for migrating any business data
stored on any of your servers? Will you be migrating your
storage hardware as well as your servers? Is your business data
safely backed up to prevent data loss from occurring during the
migration process?
-
Have you developed specific plans for migrating server
applications, such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server,
and Microsoft SharePoint? The migration of server applications
such as these requires special planning and consideration.
Search the TechNet Library if you require more information on
planning the migration of Microsoft server applications.
-
Have you discussed your migration plans with the vendors
of any third-party server applications you have deployed in your
environment? Will the new operating system require a new version
of these applications?
-
Have you developed plans to ensure business applications
and services remain available to users during the migration
process?
-
Have you prepared the expectations of your user population
concerning any possible service interruptions or problems that
might arise during the migration?
-
Have you laid out a schedule for when you’ll be performing
your migrations and in what order you’ll be migrating your
servers?
-
Have you assigned responsibilities to different members of
your migration team?
-
Have you thoroughly tested your server-migration plans in
a test environment that mirrors your current production
network?
Role and feature migration
A key aspect of server migration is the migration of server
roles, features, operating system settings, and data. To migrate
roles and features from previous versions of Windows Server to
Windows Server 2012, you can use the Windows Server Migration Tools.
These tools include best-practices documentation and are designed to
ensure the role and feature migration process goes smoothly and
without errors.
Windows Server Migration Tools can be installed on the
following operating systems:
-
Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2
-
Windows Server 2003 R2
-
Windows Server 2008, full installation option
-
Full installation option of Windows Server 2008 R2
-
Server Core installation option of Windows Server 2008
R2
-
Server with a GUI installation option of Windows Server
2012
-
Server Core installation option of Windows Server
2012
The source server is the server you are migrating the role or
feature from, while the destination server is the server you will be
migrating the role or feature to. For example, the source server
might be running a Full installation option of Windows Server 2008
R2 and the destination server might be running a Server Core
installation option of Windows Server 2012. The Migration Tools must
be installed on both the source and destination servers, and you
must be a member of the Administrators group on both servers.
The following migration paths are supported:
The following migration paths are not supported:
-
Migrating between source and destination servers that have
different system UI languages.
-
Roles on the Server Core installation option of Windows
Server 2008 cannot be migrated because the Microsoft .NET
Framework is not available on this installation option.
The sections that follow demonstrate how role and feature
migration can be performed.
The following procedure shows how to install and configure the
Migration Tools on a destination server running Windows Server 2012.
The goal is to be able to migrate a role such as the DHCP Server
role or the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) role from an
existing server running Windows Server 2008 R2 to the new server
running Windows Server 2012.
-
Open a Windows PowerShell session with elevated rights on
a server running Windows Server 2012 in your environment.
-
Execute the following command to install the Windows
Server Migration Tools feature on the remote server running
Windows Server 2012 and named SERVER7:
Install-WindowsFeature Migration -ComputerName SERVER7
If the local server running Windows Server 2012 you are
logged on to is a Server Core installation, type powershell.exe before executing the
PowerShell command just shown.
If the local server running Windows Server 2012 you are
logged on to is a Full installation, you can also install the
Migration Tools on the remote server by launching the Add Roles
And Features Wizard from Server Manager.
-
Open an elevated command prompt by typing cmd in your elevated Windows PowerShell
session, and change the current directory as follows:
Cd %systemroot%\system32\ServerMigrationTools
-
Create a deployment folder on the destination by running
the SmigDeploy.exe utility. This utility creates an installation
package for performing the migration and places it in a new
folder named C:\downloads\<subfolder>
where <subfolder> depends on the
operating system version and architecture of the source server.
For example, if the source computer has AMD64 architecture and
is running Windows Server 2008 R2, run SmigDeploy.exe using
these parameters:
SmigDeploy.exe /package /architecture amd64 /os WS08R2 /path C:\downloads
This creates a new deployment folder named
C:\downloads\SMT_ws08R2_amd64 on the destination server and
copies the Migration Tool files to the folder.
-
Copy the deployment folder to the local drive of the
source computer running Windows Server 2008 R2 using any
appropriate method.
The following procedure shows how to install and run the
Migration Tools on a source server running Windows Server 2008 R2 to
which you have already copied the deployment folder from the
destination computer. Note that additional steps might be required
for migrating certain roles, such as the Hyper-V role, the Routing
And Remote Access Services role, and others.
-
Open a Windows PowerShell session with elevated rights,
and execute the following command to load the Server Manager
module:
Import-Module ServerManager
-
Install the Windows Server Migration Tools feature by
running this command:
Add-WindowsFeature Migration
-
Note that if your source server is running an earlier
operating system such as Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server
2003, you also need to install the Microsoft .NET Framework and
Windows PowerShell on the source computer and then run
SmigDeploy.exe on it to register the Windows Server Migration
Tools cmdlets into Windows PowerShell.
You can now launch the Migration Tools from either the
destination or source server. For example, to launch them from a
destination server running Windows Server 2012, right-click on the
Windows Server Migration Tools tile on the Start screen and click
Run As Administrator on the app bar, as shown here:
This opens a custom Windows PowerShell session from which you
can run the various Windows Server Migration Tool cmdlets as shown
in Figure 1.
