Thu, Apr 21 2011 23:21
bradley
Should I clean install or should I do a migration?
A common question I get is ...should I clean install or should I do a migration.
I honestly think it comes down to your comfort with the AD. Sometimes you decide you just don't trust the AD and thus you'd rather rebuild, export out email (or exmerge) out to pst files. You'll copy over the profiles and the date. (needless to say I've blogged this before -- http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2009/02/09/so-ya-wanna-do-a-clean-install-in-an-existing-network.aspx)
If someone else set up the AD and you really don't trust it, if you need to majorly redo the network, if you want to rename the domain... all of these are valid reasons. But I'm still not convinced that "I have 5 users" is a good enough reason.
Then there's probably a follow up question ...should I do Microsoft migration or swing migration. Now I'll be the first to say that as long as you have a system state backup, to take your server back to pre SBS 2011 install is honestly trivial. You shouldn't be picking through AD trying to do what the migration did, you should just restore the system state.
SBSmigration.com - Why Swing to SBS 2011?:
http://www.sbsmigration.com/pages/44/
A common question I get is "Why do a Swing Migration" now that Microsoft has defined their own Migration Mode and path for setup that can preserve the Active Directory as part of the installation?
One answer might be: Ask the people trying the LIVE DOMAIN MIGRATION procedure defined by Microsoft and think about the agony of getting half-way through and stuck, or worse, the upgrade dies during setup but YOU have to undo everything it did to try again. Swing Migration is safe, it's sane, it's predictable and it's done without modifying the production domain or server. Relax...Swing Migration solves the headaches.
If you are familiar with Swing Migration, you likely have valued the following benefits:
- Same domain name and Active Directory preserved
- Same server name and IP preserved
- Work "construction offline" for parallel testing and an open timeline to deploy
- Existing production server remains online and unchanged during construction
- Nothing to Undo if your migration plan is delayed or construction becomes blocked
- Transparent replacement of the OriginalDC with a new FinalDC
- Option to put the OriginalDC back online if needed...unchanged by the migration path
- Convenient and optimized work to build offsite, offline, and minimize transition time
- Schedule the server transition, and the data transfer, obtaining minimized downtime
- Little if nothing to do at the workstations, no change to profiles or UNC paths
- Predictable project construction path
- Clean install server that "looks the same" to the domain computers and users
A larger view of the benefits of Swing Migration using the new Swing It!! Kit solution (once it is completed) is that the tools and updates available will make it much easier to keep up with changes and new information. Rather than trying to keep all the new concerns in your head, updates to the migration tools will make it feasible to limit the amount of documentation and supplements necessary to have a "current project path" solution month after month, year after year
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