5 Server 2003 Migration Pitfalls

5 Server 2003 Migration Pitfalls

Migrating from Server 2003 to Server 2012 R2 includes a number of pitfalls. Here’s five.

Pitfall 1: You’ve left it to the last minute. This one has tripped up many people. While I’m thinking about the Server 2003 End of Support date all the time because I’ve been writing these blog posts for ages, it’s not even on the radar for many administrators who rarely bother looking at the technical news. There will be a sizable number of organizations out there that will be surprised that Server 2003 has reached End of Support

Pitfall 2: You can’t upgrade directly from Server 2003 to Server 2012 R2. There is no direct migration path. You’ll have to transfer workloads between the old server and the new server. You just can’t put in the installation media and click upgrade.

Pitfall 3: Many workloads that run on Server 2003 won’t run on Server 2012 R2. If you’ve got an application written by a vendor that’s been running on Server 2003 for a decade or so, you may find, much to your chagrin, that the version of the application you’ve been running on Server 2003 doesn’t work on Server 2012 R2 because it is incompatible.

Pitfall 4: Your skills are out of date. Because you haven’t gotten around to using Server 2012 R2, the OS is a mystery to you. When I’m training people on Server 2012 R2, I meet a large number of people that have never even looked at the interface and are a bit mystified because it’s so different to Server 2003.

Pitfall 5: Your hardware isn’t up to running Server 2012 R2. Many organizations have been using the same hardware for a long time. It might host Server 2003 fine, but it may be that there simply aren’t drivers for hardware that get it to work well with Server 2012 R2.