The Microsoft Whitepaper

After perusing the Technet I found a large collection of information regarding the SBS 2003 server software. After some more research I eventually found a whitepaper written by Microsoft detailing the exact procedure I have been looking for! The very title of the document is "Migrating Windows Small Business Server 2003 to New Hardware"

WOOT! Exactly what I was looking for. After a quick glance over the paper it appears as though this is all I will need to complete the project. Each step is laid out, every single mouse click is accounted for and it all seems too good to be true. Sadly this is all too true.

Without another moment's hesitation I read through the entire guide and begin prep work. After a day I have completed all of the prep, and reviewed the document. The following day is spent working on beginning the transfer, backing up the computers, and installing a fresh copy of SBS 2003 on the new Dell.

By the end of the day I have DCPROMO'd the new server to a DC and even managed to replicate the AD without any hitches.

Day two begins as usual. Thankfully the network is still up and running and nothing has begun to blow up. I begin to transfer the FSMO roles and everything seems to be running along smoothly. I begin to work on the exchange transfer when I hit a bump. I cannot migrate the public folders using the procedure listed in the whitepaper. Not a huge issue because my company does not use the folders... still, the fact remains that the whitepaper appears to be incomplete on this subject.

The following day hell strikes. As everyone tries to boot up and log in, my new server is offline because it is attached to a circuit which is switched off at night. The server is not rebooted in time to handle the login requests. Our pathetic network hardware also decides to take a dump and fail after years of spotty service.

All of these problems combine to form a day of pure stress for myself and the other IT guy responsible for ensuring our company can actually run. After messing around with the servers and the network hardware, I conclude that the problem is network hardware related and we buy a new switch.

All of our connectivity is solved temporarily and everything goes back to normal. I back out of our server transfer and go back to researching methods.

In conclusion, the whitepaper does not cover all the bases. It is a free resource so it makes sense that the documentation leaves some places where a $250 phone call might be required. After failing this method I decided to search again for migration techniques. Among my wanderings I stumble across a blog describing the difficulties of the whitepaper, something I would have liked to see before I attempted to land a kickflip 360 to a tailslide down an 8 stair. What did we learn? Things that are too good to be true, often are...