[hons]

Hi,

We're planning to upgrade our network from 2003 to 2008 and would like to have some information on the steps.

Right now we have a 2003 network with several 2000 servers but they are used as application servers only.

We have 8 x 2003 servers (32 bit) standard in different locations. Two in the main office that one used as DC and the other one used as file server. Others act as secondary DCs in different offices.

I want to know if there is any way to directly upgrade the 2003 servers to 2008 x64 or I need to upgrade one by one. If I need to upgrade one by one, what would be the steps???

Thank you in advance for all your help.

[Tripredacus]

While you can do an in-place upgrade using the migration wizard, I'd recommend against it. Downtime could be the least of your concerns, but I recommend building new servers and migrating the roles over. Others may have a better response, but the concept is scary to me and I've heard some horror stories.

[hons]

Tripredacus,

Thanks for your suggestion.

Is there any way I can find step-by-step information to the upgrade?? I did some search from MS but wasn't able to find it.

I also want some information on 2000AD upgrade to 2008.

I post here for a month but seems nobody can help!!!!!

Could you help me on this??

Thanks.

[Tripredacus]

One of those "read all before continuing" things.
http://social.techne...2-c7b2a5c23901/

[hons]

Many thanks for your info. Will read through it.

One more thing I want to know is would it be possible to just upgrade directly without buying new hardware??

Thanks.

[cluberti]

Of course it is possible, but you should plan carefully to avoid downtime if you don't simply install new servers and migrate.

[hons]

But as I read from other posts, only 2003 can upgrade to 2008 and also has to match the platform (x86 and x64). Is 2000 can direct upgrade to 2008??

Thanks.

[submix8c]

hons, on 18 December 2011 - 12:00 AM, said:

But as I read from other posts, only 2003 can upgrade to 2008 and also has to match the platform (x86 and x64). Is 2000 can direct upgrade to 2008??

1 - True
2 - Use 2003 as an intermediary (upgrade 2000->2003->2008)

(I know no more than that - sorry...)

[cluberti]

You can only upgrade from 2003 to 2008 (and yes, you must stick to x86 unless your 2003 servers are x64), so you'd need to upgrade to 2003 first on all your domain controllers. This is one of the many reasons you should do *new installs* of 2008 R2 (x64) and migrate, rather than in-place upgrade as we've recommended .

[CoffeeFiend]

cluberti, on 18 December 2011 - 06:27 PM, said:

This is one of the many reasons you should do *new installs* of 2008 R2 (x64) and migrate

This. That's the only way I would do it personally. And with a virtualization platform too (vSphere or Hyper-V).

hons, on 16 December 2011 - 04:26 PM, said:

would it be possible to just upgrade directly without buying new hardware??

I sure wouldn't want to be running 2008 or 2008 R2 on Win 2000/2003 era hardware.

[cluberti]

CoffeeFiend, on 18 December 2011 - 10:11 PM, said:

cluberti, on 18 December 2011 - 06:27 PM, said:

This is one of the many reasons you should do *new installs* of 2008 R2 (x64) and migrate

This. That's the only way I would do it personally. And with a virtualization platform too (vSphere or Hyper-V).

Considering 2008 R2 comes with Hyper-V, and if the OP uses an enterprise or datacenter license, the first 4 VMs (or all of them, in datacenter's case) would be freely licensed), that would be the obvious choice in this case, at least to me.

[hons]

The reason I'm asking is that I have 3 sets of AD (They are not connected with each other) as follow:

1) Win2000 AD with several DCs they need to be upgraded to 2k8 but can only use the existing hardware (all Xeons)

2) Win 2k3 AD with several DCs and all x32,

3) Win 2k3 AD running r2 (x64).

All of them needed to be upgrade and have different requirements but none of them want to buy new hardware. That's why make me so confuse on how to work on them.

I'm looking for something like step-by-step information to follow with!! Please provide some help!!!!

Thanks.

[cluberti]

hons, on 19 December 2011 - 02:31 PM, said:

I'm looking for something like step-by-step information to follow with!! Please provide some help!!!!

Thanks.

Microsoft has a whole series of Technet articles on directory services upgrades.

Again, if I were you, I would *strongly* recommend they migrage and pony up for new hardware (even temporarily). Otherwise, you need to make sure they're aware that there WILL be downtime during the transition, as you will need to take full backups (disk2vhd is a good method, assuming the Windows partitions are 127GB or smaller) of EVERY DC IN THE ENVIRONMENT AT THE SAME TIME, and then migrate, carefully, one DC at a time (waiting between upgrades to make sure replication, auth, etc. are all still working after each DC is physically upgraded to the next OS. Also, given you may be going from 2000 to 2003, and then from 2003 to 2008 or 2008 R2, you will need to do everything TWICE, including a full environment backup of the 2000 environment, upgrading each and every DC (one at a time) pausing between each upgrade to make sure everything is working on each DC post-OS upgrade, and then (once you're at 2003 across the board) doing everything a second time (including a full environment backup of each DC).

[CoffeeFiend]

cluberti, on 19 December 2011 - 09:53 AM, said:

Considering 2008 R2 comes with Hyper-V, and if the OP uses an enterprise or datacenter license, the first 4 VMs (or all of them, in datacenter's case) would be freely licensed), that would be the obvious choice in this case, at least to me.

Different strokes for different folks I guess. We're probably addressing different needs with vSphere (me) and Hyper-V (you). We use it as a thin "shim" (ESXi that is) to have an OS that will run/restore on any hardware (we've had to do it too), and some server consolidation too, whereas you're most likely using it for server consolidation. Hyper-V as a "host" is heavier and takes longer to install, and around here all consultants only support/recommend vSphere (we even rented a temp server that was running it), and we already had significant experience & investment in VMWare's solutions, so it was really a no-brainer for us (I'm not suggesting that's the one and only universal solution for everybody though)

As for his setup, I'm guessing he probably wants to use a bunch of separate DCs across different sites and for redundancy, which running a Enterprise or Datacenter edition with Hyper-V wouldn't really help for. But I'm sure it's a nice option for Datacenters and the like.

hons, on 19 December 2011 - 02:31 PM, said:

(all Xeons)

That essentially means nothing at all, besides that they're Intel CPUs that have been produced somewhere in the last 14 years. Xeons span from the Pentium 2-based Xeon @ 400MHz from 1998, all the way to Sandy Bridge based ones (like the latest 2nd generation i7's). For all we know, it could be P3-era hardware (that's fairly likely given the OS) that barely runs Win2k adequately. Combine that with older SCSI disks, slow single core CPUs, not so much RAM and the like, and you get something I definitely wouldn't want to upgrade to 2008 (essentially "Vista Server", not quite the same overhead as Win2k!) or 2008 R2. I would check the minimum requirements first. If you do attempt to upgrade ancient hardware, be prepared to roll back the old installation when the inevitable happens

[hons]

Thanks all for the info. Will try and update status.

[cluberti]

CoffeeFiend, on 19 December 2011 - 04:18 PM, said:

Different strokes for different folks I guess. We're probably addressing different needs with vSphere (me) and Hyper-V (you). We use it as a thin "shim" (ESXi that is) to have an OS that will run/restore on any hardware (we've had to do it too), and some server consolidation too, whereas you're most likely using it for server consolidation. Hyper-V as a "host" is heavier and takes longer to install, and around here all consultants only support/recommend vSphere (we even rented a temp server that was running it), and we already had significant experience & investment in VMWare's solutions, so it was really a no-brainer for us (I'm not suggesting that's the one and only universal solution for everybody though)

Yeah, possibly - it sounds like upgrades for 3 different forests (potentially different companies, I would surmise), and I tend to use Hyper-V in that scenario for migration (put the DCs on the Hyper-V box temporarily until the physical hardware can be replaced/upgraded/whatever). It can be permanent too, although yes, that is more server consolidation.

hons, on 19 December 2011 - 06:26 PM, said:

Thanks all for the info. Will try and update status.

Good luck to you - please do let us know how it goes.

[Tripredacus]

While the idea of installing 2008 on Windows 2000 era hardware doesn't seem to be the greatest idea to me, wouldn't it be possible to create a VM, install Server 2003 to it, and transfer the roles to it from the 2000 Server? Then install 2008 and tranfer the data from the 2003 to it?

[cluberti]

That's what I had mentioned earlier, although that would require VM-capable hardware (host-based virtualization wouldn't necessarily be a good idea here for a migration perf-wise), which has already been discounted due to not being able to acquire new hardware.

[hons]

Hi,

Just want to update the status.

I started the process from the simple one (Case 3 from post #12).

I cloned the 2k3 DC to a VM and created another 2k8r2 VM and did the following:

a) I joined the 2k8 to the domain,
used "DCPromo" to upgrade the 2k8 server to be a DC.

From this step, I stucked. What is next step??

How can I take out the old DC??
How to transfer the AD information to the new DC??
How to move the data and login scripts to the new server?? (I used the DC as file server and DNS too).

Thanks.

[Tripredacus]

So currently the 2008 is a backup DC?

I know there is an actual guide on TechNet/KB about doing a domain transfer, but I can't find the link. There are some general outlines that users have posted here in the past:
http://www.msfn.org/...rading-of-my-dc
http://www.msfn.org/...ve-exchange-2k3