Upgrading your existing servers is essential when you want to take advantage of the latest features. However, this can become complicated with just one server. When you consider environments that have multiple servers, the job can become quite challenging, especially when those servers have complex workloads running on different hardware and under various configurations. Whether you have one server or many in your migration plans, there are multiple factors to consider and proper planning is crucial to success.
Migrating to the latest windows server is an intricate process requiring the following multiple essential steps to ensure a successful migration. Installing Windows Server Migration Tools prepares you to migrate server roles, operating system settings, features and other data and shares this data with Windows 2012 servers. This critical preparatory information can be obtained by running the migration preparation tool on the source server. To verify the state of a source server, run the Windows SBS 2008 Best Practice Analyzer. Create a migration plan for each server’s applications.
It is easy to see that migrating to a later version of Windows Server is a complex task involving numerous business and administrative applications and requiring configuration testing of networks and servers. Good planning is essential to a successful outcome.
Switching from Windows 2003-2012: Why now?
Those still running important business applications in Windows Server 2003 environments must consider making near term upgrades. One important reason is that all support for this product will end in two years. Just as grave an issue is maintenance as the latest service pack was released over six years ago and mainstream support ceased three years ago.
On the horizon are future problems with security, performance and server management and they will continue to grow. Ultimately, failure to make a timely migration will cost time and money that most enterprises can ill afford.
How the Cloud Assessment Tool will help you prepare to migrate from Windows 2003 to 2012
Migrating from Windows 2003 to 2012 requires careful planning. As with any migration, this is best accomplished with the aid of a map. In this instance, look to the Rackspace Cloud Assessment Tool for Microsoft Operating Systems, a complimentary Rackspace download that helps customers choose the right-size cloud server for their migration. The tool analyzes key attributes of system configuration and performance, pulling the system’s performance over a period of minutes selected by the user. It’s easy to use, thorough and non-invasive, making no changes to the system or registry as it gathers such key stats as CPU usage, disk and memory utilization, disk and network I/O performance. It then recommends a server size for the migration. Any critical factors that might impede the migration are red-flagged for attention. At the end of the assessment, the user can click on an icon and be taken directly to Rackspace to ask questions and discuss migration concerns and the migration process.
The benefits of migrating to a Cloud Windows Server
The benefits of migrating to a cloud Windows server are clear and the logic behind them compelling: they encompass the overlapping virtues of economy, scalability and flexibility.
Economy can be realized at the onset by a firm’s deciding its business applications are best served by cloud hosting, rather than on site. The cost of in-house servers and programmers, hardware specialists and managers needed to create, deploy and manage sophisticated business applications can be daunting. And redundant and a waste of resources in an era where cloud computing offers the vertical flexibility to immediately scale operations up response to sudden demand, and the horizontal flexibility to configure and broaden capacity in anticipation of a major traffic event, such as a sale or holiday.
Yet large as initial savings may be with the decision to migrate to the cloud, savings over the long term may be even greater, as economies of scale are realized through cloud computing, with resources that once went into capital expenditure being diverted to operations and into the firm’s core activities.
Although migration to a Windows cloud server is a complex process, the advantages to be realized in the reallocation of company resources, and the enormous gain in computing resources available through the cloud, well reward the time and effort spent.