Upgrade from 2008r2 advice please folks

[Sir]

I have 12ish 2008r2's running 2dc's, file servers, print servers, sql, etc. all vms. All w stations are 7at the mo...

 

Would you advise starting with machines such as print server or the dc's?

 

What are the key issues to look out for such as adding a 2012r2 as a 3rd live dc to a 08 structure and do I start with the PCD?

 

I'm just after a bit of a roadmap or loose plan advice here and some things to consider from you lot as most things I'm sure is over complications the issue. Also some good sites/ books to help would be. Great if you know of any.

 

Happy Movember!

[tmcd35]

To my mind there are two questions. Whats to be gained from upgrading the OS? and is it currently broke? By using this I still have machines running Server 2003, I haven't come up with a good mission critical reason to upgrade them and they are currently working.

 

Your DC's are probably the most obvious likely candidates to want updating first depending on your current client OS and future client OS role out plans. Externally facing servers, web servers, e-mail, etc, probably want updating and patching up to the hilt ASAP just from a security point of view. There might be newer features in Server 2012 for your file servers, SMB v2, FSRM, etc, that might make them worth looking at at some point. SQL servers, I'd go back to the publishers of any software running on them (Capita for SIMS, etc) and ask them for their roadmap, use that as a guide of when to upgrade - again if it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

So really it's back to the very first question - what are you trying to achieve by upgrading the OS?

[3s-gtech]

No harm in migrating your DCs first of all. My experience has been to add new 2012 R2 servers, rather than in-place upgrading. You'll be prompted to upgrade the schema. You don't start with your FSMO role holder as such, you shift roles over as your new DCs are built.

 

Print servers are very easy to migrate from 2008R2 IME - the migration tools for the printers and drivers are built into Windows already. Very quick switchover if you plan accordingly.

 

Some services (such as Exchange if you run it) should not be in-place upgraded at all, they live and die on their original OS.

[Sagima]

We started off with the Hyper-V servers, then the Fileservers, then the Print Servers, then the DCs, currently on application servers (exchange and soon sql and then sccm). Basically as soon as we found something we wanted to use with 2012r2 we upgraded the servers to take advantage of it and now we are just standardising the others.

 

Fileservers and DCs were in-place upgrades but the rest were not.

 

We haven't encountered any problems doing it that way.