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Chris Currell

Migrate or start fresh?

We have simply outgrown SBS 2011. We are an office of about 65 employees, about 30 servers, 3 VMware hosts, a NAS, 156TB of backup data going back 8 years, 10 virtual desktops, Wi-Fi network, IP phone system, and O365. In this office we have used all SBS has to offer. Over the past few years we have started to move away from the one server installs that most SBS users have.

We now have separate servers to perform the following:

  •  Print server
  • Backup domain controller that is also our DHCP, DNS server, and file storage
  • SQL server – two actually – SQL 2008R2 and SQL 2014
  • SharePoint server as well as SharePoint in O365
  • ADFS serve
  • KMS server
  • Backup Server (Veeam)
  • vCenter Server
  • VMware Horizon server (virtual desktops)
  • IP phone server
  • Various other application servers

What this has left us with is an SBS server that is responsible for AD, secondary DNS and Exchange.  We do make use of O365 and have migrated all our mail boxes there. Currently we are configured in a hybrid configuration with O365. We manage our users locally and replicate changes to O365. We like this arrangement and feel we need to keep a local exchange server for several reasons. We do not do any folder redirection as we use OneDrive and O365 SharePoint

My experience with SBS goes way back to SBS 4.0 in 1997 and I have installed and supported every version of SBS on multiple client’s networks. I am sad to see SBS go. But in this office its time to move on. SBS has presented some limitation over the past few years that we have been able to work around. But there is one huge limitation that really has no simple, sustainable work around. The fact that SBS must have a class C subnet, (255.255.255.0) limits you to only 254 devices on a network. We currently are very close to this limit.

I took over this network in January 2007. At that time my predecessor had just upgraded their hardware and a migration to SBS 2008. Since then I have migrated to SBS 2011. Shortly after migrating to SBS2011 we started visualizing the network with VMware. I believe this company started using version SBS2000 and maybe even 4.5. So there has been a huge amount of crap migrated between versions along the way.

I question if a migration is better than starting over with a fresh domain given the extensive updates and migration of this server. I have completed all the health checks outlined in step one of the migration kit and things look great from a health stand point.

  • The BPA report shows a few warnings but nothing I wasn’t expecting.
  • Get-ADForest shows what I would expect. (only my two domain controllers)
  • Exchange is behind on Update Rollups. Currently on 9 and 26 is current
  • Event Viewer did show a few File Replication Service errors (13568) but they were from back in 2017
  • Dcdiag test passed for both domains.
  • We do have Netlogn and Sysvol shares

 I see there being two options here.

Starting with a fresh DC and Exchange server.

  • The work to accomplish this would be huge. Each workstation would have to be visited and joined to the new domain.
  • A lot of the configuration work for the new domain could be completed and tested before hand in a virtual test environment we have.

·Migrate SBS using the migration kit on this sight and carry on.

  • Exchange would be migrated to Exchange 2019 as well.
  • Group policies would require some clean up.

I would like to hear other opinions and comments on this project. I am leaning towards doing the migration but am concerned about cleaning up the remnants of SBS for years to come.

asked03/20/2019 19:57
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Mariette Knap

Microsoft MVP

Chris,

Really, any other choice than a migration would be silly. We can migrate your current SBS to a new DC + Exchange. I would not be worried about leftovers or such and if there are any we can clean up and/or fix those. Any issue you have on the SBS should be fixed before the migration.

Chris Currell

OK. I can give it a try. Can we use Server 2019 Core with Windows Admin Center with this migration kit?

replied 03/21/2019 20:33
Chris Currell

I forgot to ask above, Is this migration, SBS 2011 to Server 2019, the same as past migrations? In that once you start the migration you have 21 days to complete the migration before SBS starts being unhappy?

Also what kind of time should I allow to complete the migration? I would like to do most if not all of it during office hours.

replied 03/22/2019 00:33
Mariette Knap

Microsoft MVP

Chris,

In chapter 7 of How to migrate SBS 2011 to Windows Server 2019 Standard, Datacenter or Essentials I install the new Domain Controller and with the help of Powershell I configure it and promote it to become a replica DC. You can do the same on a Windows Server 2019 Core edition but I have not yet introduced Windows Admin Center. The last can be done as an extra and I will write about that next week. I will write a short tutorial about introducing Windows Server Core in an SBS scenario and use Windows Admin Center.

Yes, the SBS will not allow you to have it around as soon as you move FSMO roles. You can have the SBS longer around if you don't touch FSMO roles. You can decide to move those shortly before you actually demote the SBS. That will give you a bit more time to move things and think about the steps you need to take along the migration.

Most can be done during office hours. The only daunting issue with migrations is either redirected folders though I solved that in a new way in the last version of How to migrate SBS 2011 to Windows Server 2019 Standard, Datacenter or Essentials. The other issue can be Exchange if DNS is not functional or in the case of public folder migration you will see a short period where those cannot be accessed by users.

replied 03/22/2019 06:31
Mariette Knap
replied 03/25/2019 08:33
Chris Currell

Thank you, Mariëtte, for this. This is exactly the route I was hoping to go but with VMWare instead of Hyper-V. Windows Admin Center is a great product and can be used with older operating systems as well. We love it. No more RDP connection to every server you want to manage. We also find the WAC provides much more information at a glance on your server status. 

We currently are using local exchange in hybrid mode. So in the case, we can use Server 2019 Standard and Exchange 2019 to maintain our hybrid mode configuration? Of course, this would require a two-step upgrade, Exch 2010 to Exch 2016 to Exch 2019.

We are just setting up our sandbox area to test this upgrade scenario out and hopefully identify any issues beforehand.

replied 03/28/2019 13:48
Mariette Knap

Microsoft MVP

We currently are using local exchange in hybrid mode. So in the case, we can use Server 2019 Standard and Exchange 2019 to maintain our hybrid mode configuration? Of course, this would require a two-step upgrade, Exch 2010 to Exch 2016 to Exch 2019.

Yes, you need Server Standard and not Core. The two guides you need for the Exchange migration are here:

If you have migrated to EX2016 and you are ready to go to EX2019 please contact me. There are some quirks for this last step that needs to be addressed if your users depend on OWA during the last step. Those are not covered in the guide because they are rare but I think in your case it would be a good idea to discuss.
replied 03/28/2019 17:12
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Last Activity 03/28/2019 17:12

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