Migrating SBS 2003 to Standard 2003

mr2nut

I'm currently wanting to migrate our domain to Standard. I have done Standard to Standard migrations before and SBS to SBS, but are there any differences and 'gotchas' to going from SBS to Standard? I have already purchased the licensing for Standard (and found out after about the transition pricing....doh!). Can I manually just transfer the FSMO roles, replicate DNS to the new NS and copy DHCP etc. then just install the new CALs?

mbarra

How to upgrade Small Business Server Domain Environment to regular Windows 2003 Domain

rsutton

I did a SBS2k3 to SBS2k8 migration over the weekend, what a PITA. I would be interested to know what process you use to do this as I'm sure it will be different from the SBS to SBS process and I may be doing one in the future.

NetAdmin2436

So you didn't get the transition pack?

You are basically paying full price all over again and it's going to be MUCH tougher. I don't even know if it's possible without starting from scratch and moving everything over manually. The transition pack would have been a fraction of the price. It allows the current cals to be converted. You basically just run the CD's from your SBS and it would have removed the SBS constraints, leaving you with a standard server. You could have kept the FSMO roles on the now transitioned server or then transferred to another server if desired. I could be wrong, but I don't think MS even supports transitioning SBS to standard without the transition pack.

One of the rules with SBS is that it always has to be the one and only FSMO role holder.

Is there anyway you can return your licensing you bought and buy the transition pack? Seriously, I would call your vendor and explain what happened.

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server R2: Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 Transition Pack

mr2nut

NetAdmin2436 wrote: »

So you didn't get the transition pack?

You are basically paying full price all over again and it's going to be MUCH tougher. I don't even know if it's possible without starting from scratch and moving everything over manually. The transition pack would have been a fraction of the price. It allows the current cals to be converted. You basically just run the CD's from your SBS and it would have removed the SBS constraints, leaving you with a standard server. You could have kept the FSMO roles on the now transitioned server or then transferred to another server if desired. I could be wrong, but I don't think MS even supports transitioning SBS to standard without the transition pack.

One of the rules with SBS is that it always has to be the one and only FSMO role holder.

Is there anyway you can return your licensing you bought and buy the transition pack? Seriously, I would call your vendor and explain what happened.

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server R2: Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 Transition Pack

It was something that my current workplace had already bought before I got here. I was under the impression that it would be cheaper to get the Standard licenses as they didn't need Exchange, rather than moving over the licenses from the SBS setup?

Also, it is possible to move from SBS to Standard. Simply transfer the FSMO roles and then rather than dcpromo'ing the SBS off the domain, simply delete the computer account and then turn it off. Job done

HeroPsycho

mr2nut wrote: »

It was something that my current workplace had already bought before I got here. I was under the impression that it would be cheaper to get the Standard licenses as they didn't need Exchange, rather than moving over the licenses from the SBS setup?

Also, it is possible to move from SBS to Standard. Simply transfer the FSMO roles and then rather than dcpromo'ing the SBS off the domain, simply delete the computer account and then turn it off. Job done

Rest assured that's not that simple. Good luck with your resulting Exchange infrastructure when you do that. YIKES!

RobertKaucher

HeroPsycho wrote: »

Rest assured that's not that simple. Good luck with your resulting Exchange infrastructure when you do that. YIKES!

They did not need Exchange. So just delete it in AD Sites and Services. I actually migrated my home SBS 2003 domain to AD 2008 Standard and did this. I then added Exchange 2007 a few months later.

But this was just my home system. Had I been doing this for a business, I would have started from scratch and migrated the accounts and permissions. At one company I worked for we went from a 2000 domain (the PDC had become infected with a virus and there were some other issues) so we decided to just scrap the old domain, export the accounts, and mod the permissions on file shares. I wrote Perl scripts that used CACLS to mod the perms on file shares and I used a simple batch file with NETDOM to remove and rejoin the PCs from the domains.

We bought about 5 flash drives and put the batch files and netdom on them. 5 nontechies went around and did the remove/joins on 200 PCs. Took a Saturday afternoon and there were few issues.

File permissions were a little bit of a pain in the @$$, but the Perl script saved a ton of time.