Upgrading server - any advice

[collegeboyslive]

My motto has been " if it aint broke dont fix it" especially when it comes to windows OS on a live server.

well the time has come for us to do a major upgrade from windows server 2003 to server 2008 to enable us to roll out some amazing tech improvements at collegeboyslive,

I must say, with so much custom components running on our system, im a little worried, Has anyone done this upgrade path before and any advice or problems I should watch out for?

obviously we will be running both systems while be test and make sure the new is totally operational, just trying to avoid much hair pulling and late nights as I migrate over.

Thanks

zac

[steven619]

Zac,

Any chance you can have a dev server to test the upgrade first? Or maybe have your hosting provider setup a new server or cloud for you to migrate to and make sure it all goes well before switching the DNS and going live on the new windows version?

For the most part everything should work, however, there is still a chance that something may not work on the new version or a new update. Having a windows backup is great but as you may already know, restoring the full windows server with your data could be time consuming and have issues.

Unless needed, we turn off auto update on windows servers because of issues even with minor updates. I'm always a over cautious when any updates are done even if they are minor.

Steven

[collegeboyslive]

yes i wont be just throing everything on and flipping the switch and hopeing, we will be testing over the next month before switching the dns over. I was wondering of anyone doing the upgrade form server 2003 to 2008 and hitting a particular r issue that they can pass to me to avoid, like "dont set this to one with that " or things of that nature. Nothing is more frustrating than to get 20-30 hours of configuring and something you do crashes the OS.

[steven619]

Zac,

Take a look at this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...(v=ws.10).aspx
You may have already seen this document but I offer it in case you haven't.

I know it is basic but for the most part 80% of our upgrades happen without an issue. However, we do run into a custom script that will cause a problem from time to time. We just have to figure it out when we find one.

The biggest protection, as you already know, is to setup that dev server "as is" and test it from there. I wish everyone would do that but we will have clients that forget to test an upgrade or change on a dev server ( or cloud ).

If you run into any specific issues drop me a note and I'll run it past our window server gurus.

Steven

[collegeboyslive]

Take a look at this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...(v=ws.10).aspx
You may have already seen this document but I offer it in case you haven't.

thanks, always worth taking the time to read and check beforehand, better than to be 3/4 of the way through and do something to crash the entire system