Upgrading Windows Server 2003 SP2 to R2

[ChrisP]

As I have LOADS of servers including the VM's, im wondering...

Is R2 somthing we have to pay for or is it FREE as in SP2?
Can we just buy the CD media and upgrade or is that too easy?

Thanks in advance for the help guys

[DMcCoy]

It is a seperate product. It's not free and there is no upgrade route. If you have non R2 licenses you have to buy it again!

Edit: Unless you had active software assurance on your existing licenses (which I have due too schools agreement)

[ChrisP]

fek, i'll wait for longhorn then...... UNLESS

i take it I can just get a couple of licencess to use on the servers where i want the additional features....

WHAT ABOUT CALS?

were licenced per device so I can have as many servers as I wish, does R2 require seperate CALS's than 2003 Standard?

TA !!

[DMcCoy]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...loverview.mspx

"The same Windows Server 2003 Client Access License is used to access both Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 servers."

[Geoff]

Win2k3 and Win2k3 R2 will happily co-exist. You may need to do a schema update in AD though.

[markcuk]

i had he same problem just found this fix

i just deleted the following entry and it now installs

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager
rename the PendingFileRenameOperations registry entry.

mark

[mrforgetful]

There's a registry key you can just delete to get rid of the Restart needed warning, can't remember where exactly though!

I had to do that on my Application Server as Sophos kept wanting restarts.

[Michael]

Windows Server 2003 R2 is fantastic. If you purchase Server 2003 now, you will automatically get R2.

Initially when R2 was released it came on a seperate disc, but now it all comes on one disc - unless you buy the Enterprise Edition.

My favourite feature is the Print Management tool. Setup a network (or local printer) as you would normally. Share the printer then proceed to the Print Management tool. You can then push out printers to XP Pro (doesn't work with 2000 Pro) by Group Policy on a per user or per computer level, per OU.

If you're looking for an easy to use guide, take a look here. Yesterday I setup three new photocopiers (which also act as network printers) and distributed to all users in 10 minutes. All the user has to do is logoff and logon again and the printers are available to use. This also works perfectly with Print Manager Plus 6 to monitor printer consumption.

In my opinion if you're using Windows 2000 server SP4 or Windows Server 2003 SP1/SP2, I would wait for Windows Server 2008 which will include all R2 features and probably a lot more.

[zag]

Yeh loving R2, some great features. I'm sure its available to use under your normal schools agreement for 2003 server. Its just an update.

[SYNACK]

If it is the two disk edition the second disk may not run after you have installed SP2. You can fix this however by downloading the full Windows 2k3 SP2 update http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en , extracting it and then performing a slipstream http://www.petri.co.il/windows_2003_...pstreaming.htm update on the files from the second disk. This will update the installer and allow it to happily run on a SP2 box.