Well, the time has come…. our office has been testing the latest beta version of Small Business Server (V7) and I am about to embark on the migration (Microsoft’s method, not Swing migration) to the RTM code.
Here are my notes, as it happens….. I am reading a RC version of Microsoft migration document.
Source Server Prep….
I am running on HyperV (My server is virtualised). I have taken a backup of the VHD file so that if all hell breaks loose I can roll back to this. I am shutting everyone off the network.
I am running some Line of Business applications, and other third party apps… I am noting these as I will need to reinstall them (GFI Mailarchiver is the main one I need to look out for).
I have put the SBS 2011 CD in the server, I am running the preparation wizard that Microsoft have supplied, this takes me through a few steps, including creating an answer file which I will need for the new server to join this existing domain. Check, done….
Time to complete – 30 minutes, plus some while the VHD file backed up…
New Server initial prep
I have created a new Virtual Server, and I have set it up to boot from the SBS2011 DVD with a Disk with my answerfile on it which I created earlier (in true Blue Peter fashion).
Boot the box, start the installation…..
Run through the custom install, answer the questions…. wait for about three hours while it installs everything and joins the domain.
Fall asleep at computer – check, Wake up with the worst pins and needles, try to walk, fall over and lay in middle of office for 10 minutes – check.
Go home to finalise migration.
Total time – 3.5 hours, 10 minutes on floor.
Server Migration
On arrival at home, noted that wife complained to me that iPhone had insisted on her having to type in a PIN to access the exchange server. This is slightly odd as I have not migrated anything yet. Suspect that this is simply a policy that the new Exchange Server being added has caused.
Redirected folders. Thankfully we do not use them any more, and I am glad of it… Redirected folders are a pain in the ass and we don’t recommend them to anyone anymore. This means I can skip over this section of my migration. Though the documents give full details if you have to.
Turning off UAC (user Account Control) on the server. Another pain in the hole… I hate as an admin having to approve everything I want to do multiple times! Gaaaaaaah
Migration steps are asking me to reconfigure the network with the connect to the internet wizard. This scares me slightly as I am not sure if it will kill off my existing connections to the office. Sure enough, the wizard fails and my SMTP connectors in Exchange which I always modify to secure down the server are to blame. The SBS Fix my network wizard seems to fix, but will need me to look more at it later…
OK, moved over the Certificate from one server to the next… that part was easy.
1 Hour
Exchange Migration
The bit that always destroys everyones migration. My Internet address wizard is now working since I imported the cert, so that is one thing out of the way.
The documentation is telling me to setup my smarthost, done… but it is also telling me to remove my inbound SMTP connector (which is then routing the mail to the new server internally). I am going to leave that in place for the moment as I cannot get to the router to configure the change in inbound SMTP ports… later…
No POP 3 connector for me to migrate. Skipping that.
Next, started the move of the Public folders over after creating a new Exchange 2010 public folder. My Source Beta server is SBS01, the new one is SBS. I used these two commands…. the first gives me a set of stats on the Public folders to compare to later… the second moves the replicas.
Get-PublicFolderStatistics –server SBS01 | fl | out-file C:UserssbsadminDocumentsPFSBS01stat.txt
.MoveAllReplicas.ps1 –Server SBS01 –NewServer SBS
I now have to wait up to 24 hours for the replication to move…. The command I will use to then get a new text output to compare to the first one above is:
Get-PublicFolderStatistics –server SBS | fl | out-file C:UserssbsadminDocumentsPFSBSstat.txt
I’ll come back to this later to set the default public folder DB to be that on the new server, then remove the other one…
1.5 Hour.
More Exchange Migration
Move the Default Offline Address book – done, nice and easy. Change the Web Based distribution server to the new one, also easy. Lastly, set the default OAB for the new MailBox database. Done!
Now I can kick off a mailbox move request (local) for all the Mailboxes on our server. This will take a while, maybe overnight. So, on that note, I am going to bed….
My recording the next morning shows it took my store 3 hours to move. But this could change of course dependant on specific sites.
Turned on the circular logging on the new DB.
30 Mins
Sharepoint Migration
The backup of the database was easy, but restoring had a few gotcha’s that you should look out for. First, the instructions did not give me in big red writing the fact that I had to run the SQL Management studio “as administrator” It was bold, but I missed it a few times. So, lesson learned people RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR to be able to restore the DB.
Second, I had to run a command to mount the restored DB as http://companyweb. The same issue occurred and I had to give SBSAdmin user the full permissions to the database to get this to work. Another one for the notebook!
1 Hour
Updates Updates Updates
This is a brand new product, and I have 36 critical updates and 20 optional. That is an annoyance!
1.5 Hours (Wasted!)
Copy of file shares and user folders
Another easy, but time consuming step. All went well using robocopy.
3 Hours – 58GB.
I am now live running SBS 2011! Yay me, well worth the overnight migration.
Lets hope the staff can function tomorrow : )
Did you have any issues with SharePoint on the new server? Our current SharePoint DB is 15GB and from what I understand SBS 2011 is using SQL 2008 R2 Express which has DB limitation. I couldn’t get in to the SQL management studio to confirm this. Do you know?
I too did a migration but rather from sbs 2008 to sbs 2011 instead of beta to RTM. First thing that got me what the setup failed with error – Could not promote to domain controller. Left me in a learch as I did not know how to restart without Format and Reinstall and I didn’t know what caused it. End the end I figured out that complex passwords was set on the source server Group Policies so I disabled that and I figured that you can start again without reinstalling by running sbssetup.exe from the Small Business Server folder.
After that, the only hard part was public folder replication (just becuase I didn’t care and was trying to cut corners). I am now demoting the old source sbs 2008 server.