Server 2016 in place upgrade?

[Arthur]

Updating a Hyper-V host logically should be OK though, as it's all MS software at this point.

There are some gotchas.

 

In-place upgrades of cluster nodes to Windows Server 2016

 

You will all have heard about rolling cluster upgrades from Windows Server 202 R2 to Windows Server 2016 by now. The best and recommend practice is to do a clean install of any node you want to move to Windows Server 2016. However an in-place upgrade does work. Actually it works better than ever before. I’m not recommending this for production but I did do a bunch just to see how the experience was and if that experience was consistent. I was actually pleasantly surprised and it saved me some time in the lab.

 

Today, if you want to you can upgrade your Windows Server 2012 R2 hosts in the cluster to Windows Server 2016.

 

The main things to watch out for are that all the VMs on that host have to be migrated to another node or be shut down.

 

You can not have teamed NICs on the host. Most often these will be used for a vSwitch, so it’s smart and prudent to note down the vSwitch (or vSwitches) name and remove them before removing the NIC team. After you’ve upgraded the node you can recreate the NIC team and the vSwitch(es).

 

Note that you don’t even have to evict the node from the cluster anymore to perform the upgrade.

 

I have successfully upgrade 4 cluster this way. One was based on PC hardware but the other ones where:

• 
  
• DELL R610 2 node cluster with shared SAS storage (MD3200).
  
• Dell R720 2 node cluster with Compellent SAN (and ancient 4Gbps Emulex and QLogic FC HBAs)
  
• Dell R730 3 node cluster with Compellent SAN (8Gbps Emulex HBAs)
  

Naturally all these servers were rocking the most current firmware and drives as possible. After the upgrades I upgraded the NIC drivers (Mellanox, Intel) and the FC drivers ‘(Emulex) to be at their supported vendors drivers. I also made sure they got all the available updates before moving on with these lab clusters.

 

Issues I noticed:

• The most common issue I saw was that the Hyper-V manager GUI was not functional and I could not connect to the host. The fix was easy: uninstall Hyper-V and re-install it. This requires a few reboots. Other than that it went incredibly well.
  
• Another issue I’ve seen with upgrade was that the netlogon service was set to manual which caused various issues with authentication but which is easily fixed. This has also been reported here. Microsoft is aware of this bug and a fixed is being worked on.
  

Edited October 31, 2016 by Arthur

[Sagima]

In-place upgraded one of my domain controllers (2012R2-2016) at the end of last week. It took 18 minutes

 

Worked with 3 minor failings:

 

1) It ended with a licence acceptance screen which had to be clicked on before remote administration could be performed

 

and

 

2) the NPS service failed to start automatically and I had to do that myself

 

and

 

3) Had to redo the windows and office kms licences

Edited October 31, 2016 by Sagima

[Tefters]

You may notice that KMS is FUBAR from a GUI perspective, this is a general Server 2016 issue, the exe for VMS just crashes at the end, using command line is fine. This is the case for any scenario (upgrade or fresh build) just as an FYI

[Sagima]

You may notice that KMS is FUBAR from a GUI perspective, this is a general Server 2016 issue, the exe for VMS just crashes at the end, using command line is fine. This is the case for any scenario (upgrade or fresh build) just as an FYI

 

Yes. Quite. Adding the Server 016 KMS key to my 2016 KMS server resulted in a so far irreversible windows 7 not genuine warning on my windows 7 machines that called in before I noticed it.

Similar to the problem decribed in this forum posting https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/98d40290-8dc3-4abe-89d0-36cf8c2971e0/windows-10-enterprise-kms-host-renders-windows-7-enterprise-kms-clients-not-genuine-?forum=win10itprosecurity but obviously I used a 2016 kms server not a windows 10 one.

Our newest technician has been assigned the fun job of finishing off the windows 7 migration asap now (we had done about 75% of our windows computers over the last 6 months) - he was to have it done by the end of the year

 

In our case re-arming doesn't work but reimaging them does but my manager doesn't see the point of reimaging windows 7 only to reimage windows 10 a few weeks later

 

I would have to recommend using KMS only for windows 7/2008r2 and Office and using Active Directory activation for Windows 10/2016 if you have a mixed environment in case you fall victim too.

[DrCheese]

Does seem mostly safe to upgrade DC's from 2012 to 2016, as long as you keep in mind the netlogon issue. I've never been a fan of inplace upgrades before but not sure I really want the work of rebuilding our DC's from scratch!

 

I upgraded our WDS/MDT server & a basic file server with no issues. Just waiting on Veeam support now before doing the rest. (9.5 RTM occured this week, there's a fortnight's wait for partners to get it before general public tho )

Edited November 3, 2016 by DrCheese

[DrCheese]

One issue I noticed: - My DC's stopped acting as time servers so computers started becoming unsync'd - To fix this I had to add the registry key here:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/identity/ad-ds/get-started/windows-time-service/windows-2016-accurate-time

 

 

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\w32time\TimeProviders\NtpServer /v Enabled /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f