Tuesday 4 March 2008

SBS Migrations - Get a little more than 7 days breathing room

One of our clients that we are performing a Swing Migration to new hardware for is going through some significant internal changes.

These changes happened after we were contracted to complete the migration.

All of the requisite systems including the new SBS box were already to go before the changes started to happen.

As a result, our timeline went from 5 days for the migration to about 14-16 days.

We were about to loose that new SBS box to the 7 day time limitation on not being promoted into the migration domain.

In comes the Official SBS Blog and a new update to save the day: Small Business Server 2003 Migration Update 943494 Released.

We now have a KB article: 943494: Software Update to Support “Join Domain” Migration of Windows Small Business Server 2003 Data and Settings to New Hardware and the update to download with it: Software Update to Support “Join Domain” Migration of Windows Small Business Server 2003 Data and Settings to New Hardware.

After downloading the update and applying it, we now have a 21 day grace period to work with the new box.

Software Update Installation Wizard for KB943494

Note that there are quite a number of localized versions of the download. Pay close attention to which Download button being clicked on.

Also, keep in mind that the update requires a reboot of the new SBS box.

KB943494 Reboot Required

If the update had not come along, we would have had to blow away the box and reschedule a Phase 1 SBS install on it. That would have been a great waste of time.

There are any number of foreseen and unforeseen reasons why a migration may need to take longer than the allowed 7 days. It is good to see that Microsoft has acknowledged those reasons with an extension to a 21 day grace period.

Kudos to the SBS Team for the update! :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, take a look at this. Sounds like Microsoft is accepting some responsibility for some past issues. I read all the way through this thing and don’t know if the guy is real, but it’s at least pretty interesting.

www.sbsguru.spaces.live.com

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

A,

Not too sure about that.

At this point, the "grain of salt" rule applies.

We need to see some legitimate content there before it will even remotely be considered "Guru" in status.

As far as Microsoft accepting responsibility for issues, the ongoing support we receive from Microsoft for the SBS product demonstrates that they are behind SBS 110%.

To me, that is a no brainer.

Look at the Small Business Specialist designation as a good example of Microsoft leveraging us to broaden their SBS install base and raise awareness for the product as well as promoting those of us in the SBSC.

SBS is an awesome product. Period.

Philip