Migration from Windows 2003 Standard to Windows SBS 2008
I did a migration from Windows 2003 Standard to Windows SBS 2008. It went pretty smooth as this was a very small client without many users. For the most part the steps I followed were of part 3 from ITKnowledge website found here. Some key notes worthly of bullet points...
- Copy tools folder to Source/Old server and run adprep /forest and /domain from this folder.
- Create Answer File and UNCHECK unattended install.
- Do not plug in usb key with answer file on until after the install starts, if you have the key in during the start of the sbs 2008 install you will get an error after selecting which drive to install sbs server on.
- Change the boot up in the bios and set usb to last.
- After the inital part of the install finishes if you get to the page that says you will need the answer file to do a migration and you then stick the usb key in.....it's to late! it will not read the answer file and act as if you are installing a new installation and not a migration. This is why I plug the usb key in during the first restart of the sbs installation.
- Once the migration is complete the sbs console appears and if you try to run the "migrate to sbs 2008 wizard" you will get an error because the version of the source server is not sbs 2003. I heard there is a hack to get around this but I feel there really isn't a need to do this as you can finish up the final setups manually.
Lessons Learned:
If you add a second IP address to a sbs 2008 server in the nic say for a website or custom application never run the fix network wizard. If you do it will say that the DNS is not pointed to the primary IP address, if you try to fix this it will actually change the static IP address of the sbs 2008 server to your secondary IP address. This messes up DNS and DHCP and causes a headache, so I would try to avoid this.