Adventures with migrating Windows SBS2008 to Windows SBS2011 - Part 2

We take up the exciting adventures in migrating Windows SBS2008 to Windows SBS2011. The day is getting older and the laborious task of migrating Exchange data looms before us. We start by creating new Public Folder stores and configuring them. There is quite a bit of jumping backwards and forwards from the source (old server) to the destination (new server) during this process. Note there is a bit of command line work here – I highly recommend using tab complete where possible. If you haven’t used this before, type the first bit of a command or location and hit the TAB key – it will bring up the first match to those characters. Keep hitting Tab until you get what you want. Typically if it’s a multipart command, I’ll type a few letters, TAB, then a few more letters, another TAB etc until I minimise the number of letters I have to type to the bare minimum. It’s very *nix-y J

The mailboxes for the users – fortunately small – are in the process of migrating. Next will be data files and shares. We expect this to take the bulk of the time for the process. Note that the public folders suggested waiting 24 hours for them to complete the migration (No way!). This particular site has no data in the public folders so we can safely blow past this part.

The exchange migration was relatively straightforward and simple for us – not a lot of data and all over in about 30 minutes. On to the file migration and starting with the UserShares I was pleased to see that the command used was Robocopy. As you’d know from this blog I really like robocopy and its venerable cousin xcopy. Those applications have been great tools in my arsenal. We also set up the second partition – all the line-of-business data will go in here and we’ve got around 70GB of data to transfer for that. The robocopy transfer of the UserShares folder ran at about 500MB / minute so we’re looking at about 140 minutes for the big data transfer. We thought we’d get a bit of a jump on a few other bits of the migration – namely WSUS but the source server was running flat out keeping up with its new brother’s demands, so that was a no-go. Much of the migration of Fax, internal website and a few other features we were able to skip as this organisation doesn't use them. We’re at 9.25 hours so far and making good time (touch wood).

We RDP’d into the old server – turns out the console was misbehaving and started cleaning up WSUS. This process took 10 minutes by itself. Then it was time to set it up to migrate to the new server. The data copy was still proceeding and the log file was over 6MB in size already. We reviewed WSUS and decided to stop the migration – we’ll download it afresh and configure it only for the existing machines, cleaning up lots of other stuff in the meantime.

Creating a spreadsheet for all the share permissions is a handy thing to do. If you've got a lot of folders, with complex permissions I find this to be a good way to keep them all straight. It’s also a good opportunity to review Security Group membership and how these groups are applied to folders.  Robocopy with the switches the documentation suggests /COPY:SOU brings across all your ACL information so security is pretty easy to get going.

We’re up to the finish of the migration. We need to demote the old server, remove Exchange and a few other tasks. It’s a bit scary – this is the end stage. Luckily we still have the backup in case things go pear shaped. Here we go.

Removing Exchange 2007 from the old server proved challenging. There was a few difficult moments, an early “Who’s your daddy!” cry, then some silent weeping and finally success. I won’t bore you with details – sufficient to say it’s a bit of a process but our Google-Fu was up to it. The actual process of removing Exchange was surprisingly slow too – the files took a long time to delete. Not sure why – they aren't that big, and yet, 15 minutes after it started deleting them, it’s still going.  Once this process finished, we removed A/D Certificate services and then demoted the server. Rebooted and remove from network. Apparently we should now be done with the old server.

Uh Oh! It turns out that the users’ roaming profiles weren't properly copied across! Oh Noes! Powered up the dirty old server and started copying data across to a USB memory stick. Although it’s only 5GB the files are all little and so the copy time is suggesting 1 hour 20 minutes (!) I think this is uncool and my colleague agrees. Fortunately this does give us time to try and fix another issue that’s cropped up – the desktop PCs haven’t updated where they are supposed to get the redirected folders (Desktop and Start Menu) from. They’re still looking at the old server. So, with more swearing – as it is now 6:30PM and we've been at this since 8am this morning – we tackled the next issue. The desktop PCs registry’s suggest they are looking in the right place but the folder redirection still fails (it’s looking at the wrong place still so the issue of having no data there isn't yet a big one). Running gpupdate /force hasn't seemed to fix it yet. We’ll update the files, then try again – especially because the RedirectedFolders is empty – we had copied that data across so not sure what happened there.

This is a longer than anticipated process – the 5 or so GB of data is all very small files and so takes ages to copy across – more than an hour to copy it off, and only about 20 minutes to copy back in.

We found that the desktops were continuously looking in the wrong place – they were using the old server’s name in the UNC. Rather than update a million shortcuts on desktops and keep fighting the desktops I added a CNAME in the DNS to point the old server name back to the new server. Everything started working! We did find a multitude of strange, legacy shares that required recreation, so try to get all this down on paper before you get started. By this time we’d been at it for 15 hours each and we were starting to get a bit pissy. Thankfully Outlook and most other apps continued to work – we didn't need to create new profiles or anything.

We found that Exchange also had no outgoing connector to send email out. Internal email worked fine and the server was receiving mail but we couldn't spam, uh, I mean email, anyone. There was no Hub Transport Send Connector created. We got this going and suddenly the queued mail we had sudden flowed through. It was quite spectacular really – we’d sent a *lot* of test emails J

It was at this stage we made the executive decision that all the major boxes had been ticked and the network was operational. We had allotted 16 hours for each of us and we came in at 15.5 hours. Not too bad at all. We’ll no doubt have some problems on Monday but for now we’ll knock off and collapse at home. I hope some of this information is informative or at least entertaining. Here’s hoping your migration goes as well or better.

Adventures with migrating Windows SBS2008 to Windows SBS2011 - Part 1

Approaching a major migration can be a very stressful event, especially with a Small Business Server involved in the mix. Migrating one from exiting to new is even more fraught with danger. Over the course of this weekend, we are migrating a Windows SBS2008 server to a brand new Windows SBS2011 box. There is some great documentation from Microsoft about this process and I’d like to share some of the experiences we had.

Firstly, it’s critical to assemble and test the new server before anything else. Give yourself enough time to do this. Even a pre-built, delivered by HP/Lenovo/IBM server still needs testing on your part – disk, RAM and CPU at the least. Build your RAID arrays too , have them prepped and ready to go for installation. Also, identify what drivers you will need – particularly RAID controller drivers and network adaptor drivers. If you've got the NIC drivers, then you can download any others you might need.

Getting the right documentation is helpful – the Microsoft Migration documents are very thorough (and long – 60+ pages) but are pretty well step-by-step. A very large USB drive is also handy and a laptop with internet connectivity is always a must.

We ran through the initial stages, getting the 2008 server patched up to the levels required for the migration. Then a backup of the C drive – we’ll migrate data via the network later. This reduced our backup from 250GB+ to under 90GB, which took a little over 30 minutes to complete. Then, the SBS2011 disk went into the old server and the migration prep tool was run. We created an Answer File (needed for the new server) and called it a night – it was a Friday after all and around 8pm.

Next morning – installation of the new server started. Drivers for the RAID controller and NIC were needed pretty quickly. When you run the installation it gets run in Attended Migration Mode – the migration process gives you 3 weeks to complete the migration, with the possibility of having two domain controllers on the network at once. After this time, the initial server stops working and that’s that. We experienced a BSOD trying to get the network card drivers to work – ouch! Here’s hoping it recovers back to the same point in the installation…. And it more or less did, except the server doesn't have the option to install a network card driver like it did. Two options only – Test Network Connection and “How to troubleshoot network issues” which opens the Help documentation. There’s nowhere to install a driver or configured the NIC. Hitting cancel shut the server down. Uh oh. We’ll crank that mofo up again and see what happens. Remember too, the network adaptor's IP has been pre-configured via the Answer File – this actually worked.

The server rebooted and now it wants to activate because the activation period has expired. How the hell did we get to there? OK, we've chosen to enter the activation code (cause we haven’t put any codes in yet). We got to that and now we’re back at the same screen about the server being unable to proceed because it doesn't have a network connection. A three finger salute (CTRL/ALT/DEL) allowed us to access Task Manager and get to the Device Manager from there. Remember how I mentioned it would be great to have the right drivers handy? We thought we had the right ones, but alas, they were not. After hunting around and testing several different drivers, still no luck. I’m sure there’s more on the HP website and there is… let’s try some others!

While that process was going on, I looked into some details about Windows SBS 2011. From the Microsoft OEM site:

“Designed and priced especially for small businesses with up to 75 users, Windows SBS 2011 Standard is a complete solution designed for customers who want enterprise-class technologies in an affordable, all-in-one suite.

Built on Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows SBS 2011 Standard includes Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP1, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, and Windows Software Update Services.

Windows SBS 2011 Standard is a great opportunity for small businesses with prior versions of Windows SBS to upgrade their servers and to simultaneously take advantage of the advancements in security, reliability, and connectivity technology.”

Interesting indeed. SBS2011 is the last SBS. Windows 2012 Essentials doesn’t include Exchange and therefore becomes very pricy for small operations. Bring on Google Apps for that. At any rate, we've now downloaded the HP ProLiant Support Pack and installing it – 33 minutes to complete! Once this finished all the hardware driver issues were resolved and the server continued on its merry installation way. Sadly the Server Activation issue cropped up again and suggested we were victims of software counterfeiting – oh noes! Attempts to resolve this ended up in another reboot – which is usually OK but it does take a while. After restart we found the DNS wasn’t working – we adjusted it to use the ISP DNS and the server rebooted again, without much in the way of a by-your-leave. With the server live again the installation/migration continued.

The latest reboot resulted in the migration continuing and the Windows Activation windows popping up – this type the Activate Online was successful and the migration tool continued to expand and install files. 30 minutes until it finishes!

So it turns out 30 minutes was conservative. An hour on and the process was still running. We had time for coffees, pies and sandwiches. Hopefully it will finish soon…. During the interminable time while it does the migration, we noted that DHCP had stopped working  on the network. This was being delivered via the SBS2008 server and shouldn't have been affected. We restarted the service and DHCP was restored. We’re not sure why that failed.

OK so it was more like 90 minutes than 30 minutes. The server rebooted – hopefully because it’s supposed to and Windows is starting again. Sadly the process is still continuing after the reboot and the internets tells us it could do it 2 or 3 times!

After two hours the expand and install files process completed. It is now time to run the Migration Wizard, starting with File locations. This includes Exchange files and data files. We went through and used the default locations, then detected the network. It picked all this stuff up correctly and the exciting journey continued </sarcasm>.  We’ll take up the migration in the next blog post – where we begin with migrating Exchange data.

Interoperability and the Way of the Penguin

Recently I've been tasked by a client to look into alternatives to Microsoft supplied products. Why I hear you ask? Simple - while 2003 Small Business Server was a real winner for this client, 2008 SBS has been an unmitigated disaster. A previous IT provider installed it and then left it unmanaged for quite a while. Even though I have subsequently re-installed the system in accordance with Microsoft best practice, we're still having periodic problems. For exmaple, about every 12 days, Active Directory, DNS, Exchange and IIS stop talking to one another. I'm yet to find the precise cause of this and I've just updated this system with all recent updates etc as required. The client's 2003 SBS server was exceptionally stable. No problems, no failures nothing. It ran beautifully for several years and experienced almost no issues at all.

So on to the new task - they've learnt about GNU/Linux from a friend. This friend gave bugger all details but enough to hook them in. I have no problem with this - I am a big proponent of Linux and use it extensively. But, and here's the BUT! - they use systems that are very specific to Windows. The industry software they have runs only on Windows and only in a 32 bit operating system environment. In fact, it only runs properly on Windows XP - forget Vista and 7. So how to make this all work? I've played with Wine, tried using Sun VirtualBox (which is an excellent product) and still we're not getting the results the client wants. Meanwhile, their server is chugging along happily but they've lost all faith in it and in Microsoft.

While Linux is able to provide a stable operating system, good mail capabilities etc, the lack of ability to provide their key software to each user is a deal breaker. Also the whole file sharing thing isn't working out as I expected. With the client using MYOB for various accounting activities I've encountered some problems with it's access of it's files using Samba to share them. I really want to get this to work, but I'm realistic enough to realise that Linux can't be all things for all people - just like Microsoft's products can't either! And in terms of interoperability, I don't know which end is causing the main problems, but I suspect the closed nature of Microsoft's products is a large part of that. At any rate, I'll keep plugging away with it and see what happens. The good news is the client loves OpenSuSE's looks and handling and I don't have to worry about viruses and malware. Ahh so sweet!

Review: Windows Server 2008 Small Business Server

Recently I've had the requirement to install and configure Windows Server 2008 SBS. Previously I've deployed 2003 SBS in varying settings and found it to be quite a nice little product. In more recent times though, I've gone the more segmented path of Windows Server 2003 plus Exchange 2003 separately and found that to be quite effective. For a small operation, however, SBS provides many features that are very helpful to the operator who isn't necessarily skilled in IT, nor has a great deal of time to set things up and play with them. Being a Sys Admin with the inclination and the time to play with it, here are some of my thoughts regarding SBS2008.

The management system for accounts and the like is very nicely set up for the none technical user. An application with common tasks is easily available and allows for configuration of most casual system changes to be made. I refer primarily to user and group (both distribution and security) creation, file and folder shares and backup configuration/testing. SBS2008, like it's predecessor has some nice daily reports that can be emailed to the Administrator or to a designated person and contain excellent information to keep an eye on the system. For example, this includes disk usage, backup status and the like. Very nice.

SBS2008 likes to take control of the network - it offers to be the gateway, DNS, DHCP, mail and file server all in one. I had problems with this on my network - I already *have* a gateway, DNS, and DHCP servers and it didn't play nicely together at all. In fact, the installation failed and I had to restart it again from scratch. This time I was a bit smarter and had the server plugged into a dummy switch. Once the initial install was passed, I added a virtual interface to my gateway and set the SBS server to point at it. This time it was happy, but by gum it wasn't the first time around. It automatically assigned itself the .2 IP address on the network (i.e. 192.168.0.2) and off it went from there. It did talk successfully to the gateway and once I reconfigured squid and my firewall, network traffic flowed as one would expect it to.

Something I learned from SBS 2008 is that you cannot set up mail addresses etc from within Active Directory, as you can in Server 2003 (not SBS) with Exchange. Also, security and distribution groups all had to be set up from the SBS system application. Not realising this, I created groups and used the Exchange Systems Manager to set up the email accounts and groups. These did not appear in the SBS system application. Oops! I'll have to revisit it and see if it's found them or not. Something else I learned - the HP ML350 I installed SBS2008 on is a very nice machine, but the HP setup disks - which cater for nearly every *other* version of Server 2008 - do not cater for SBS 2008. Damn! All those drivers and tools had to be installed after the fact - SBS2008 just would not work with the HP boot CD. Disappointing, but the ML350 was released before SBS2008, so you can't have everything I guess. That being said, the ML350 is quite a nice bit of kit indeed and highly configurable and affordable too. This one had a simple RAID1 mirror and everything ran flawlessly - as you would definitely hope it to in this particular setting.

Overall, I was impressed with SBS2008 and if needed I would happily deploy it elsewhere. I imagine that as one becomes more familiar with it, the ease of installation and configuration would certainly increase - I felt a bit confused at times and had to rely on trusty Google to get me through. At the very least, the problems I encountered were well documented by others. I must say though, the initial problem I had with the installation of the server failing was one that had been noted on the Microsoft webpages but no solution had been offered. If your SBS 2008 install fails - make sure it is the only thing on the network when you do the install - no other servers should be present if you want it to go smoothly. By all means migrate your AD stuff later, or even better (given that it is for Small Businesses) create a fresh new directory and build it in a pristine state for roll out. Also to be noted - it requires a minimum of 60GB of hard disk space for the C drive and a minimum of 4GB of RAM (!). Lucky RAM is cheap :-)