So I’m onsite at the moment with a great new client migrating their old SBS 2003 whitebox across to a nice shiny new HP ML150 G6. Now we’ve done enough of these migrations by now to know what happens, and generally what to look out for. Having never migrated to an ML150 G6 (they are new, after all), I did get slightly delayed by not having the right NIC drivers, but we moved through that quickly.
And then we hit the issue. Server simply would not boot cleanly at various stages. No errors, would just hit the bit where the new install starts to boot from the hard drives, then nothing. Black screen. No drive activity. Nothing. I checked RAID drivers, redid the entire thing. Reworking the answer file, you name it. Last thing I checked was the USB memory stick I was using the load the answer file. Stick works just fine, and has done for a few other migrations, but not this time. The server was somehow not playing nicely with this particular USB stick. AGAGH. Anyway, once that became obviously, we moved through the issue, and all back on track. A couple of hours lost, but nothing to worry about.
Lesson learnt: If server displays odd boot behaviour, check your USB devices!
Bit geeky here, so apologies to the normals in the audience. A long term pain point with 64 bit version of windows has been the printer drivers. If 64 bit printer drivers even existed for the printer in question, fair chance they simply wouldn’t work properly. Beyond that, the vast majority of desktop systems are running 32 bit operating systems anyway, and the two simply would not meet. In my personal opinion this has been one of the fundamental reasons 64 bit OS’s haven’t gained much traction to date. So the thing is, moving forward with Windows Server, it’s all 64 bit. SBS 2008 is 64 bit only. Server 2008 R2 is 64 bit. It’s still going to be a rocky road, but here’s an excellent post from Susan with a few tips to ease the pain.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2009/11/23/migration-last-step-the-printers.aspx
A quick post here, more for our own future reference than anything. Thanks as always to Susan for her eternal vigilance.
So SBS 2003 was without doubt a rip snorter of a success story for both Microsoft, and small businesses the world over. With a cracker combination of technologies, it really did lift the bar as far as small business tech was concerned. Now that SBS 2008 is shipping, it will be interesting to see how it goes. To put my thoughts out there, I’m expecting it to a solid, polished product, which provides just as much value as SBS 2003. At this stage, I can’t see any compelling reasons to upgrade from SBS 2003 though, so the uptake I think is going to be slow and gentle (just the way it should be). As SBS 2003 servers come to end of life, and for those businesses not yet on SBS at all, I think the new product will prove to be an excellent choice.
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