Introduction to the SBS 2003 Migration Process

Hey everybody. Welcome, and rest easy for a while. If you have found this blog its probably because you have been searching and searching for the right answer to your SBS 2003 Hardware Migration quest.

Essentially this blog will review as many techniques or solutions as I can find on Google, and attempt to go in depth on each of them. Understand, I will not be attempting every single one, because that would be ridiculous, even for a blog. The idea for this blog is mostly for me to keep track of my own thoughts, and to allow any interested people to examine their own options from a more omniscient standpoint.

Once again, this blog is about migrating a SBS 2003 SP2 from old hardware to new hardware.

You have probably been looking for any and all solutions for this age old process. As you have probably noticed, there are several solutions out there, with no unanimous agreement on the best solution.

Do not fear, many have endured our struggle, it seems like some have even survived. But if you feel helpless, feel a bit better knowing that there is some other person out there suffering with you. The year is 2009 and times are rapidly changing with SBS 2003 is nearing its final days.

Despite this, your company has a strict no change policy and is squeezing every last drop of value out of their software. So we have been tasked with upgrading our server hardware. Long gone are the days when interns simply made copies or brewed coffee.

Since we are not in charge of any sort of company clout, a decent piece of server hardware has been prepurchased, and we are instructed to implement it in the network, with minimal downtime, preferably during production hours, and with minimal, if any, cost. A tall order for an inexperienced intern.

Here's a description of some of the hardware I have to deal with:
OLD:
Custom built P3 tower with 80GB HD raid 1 and 1GB of RAM

NEW:
Dell Power Edge 1800

Current software:
SBS 2003 Sp2 with Exchange 5.5

The network here consists of 9 computers running mostly windows XP SP2. One computer is running Windows 2k.

So now we have all the stuff laid out. Lets make magic happen!