Re: Migrating from SBS 2000 to SBS 2003 onto new hardware

Jeff - You know we'd recommend it regardless of whether you were an MVP or
not. It's a good process, and a major time and pain saver, as well as being
safer, and much friendlier to one's users.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64


Jeff Middleton [SBS-MVP] wrote:
Thanks SG!

And thanks also to the other folks who gave comments.

There were two things really important points I wanted to add that I
didn't find got emphasis in the other posts, though I think it's in the
snip that SG included.

1. The time to do a Swing Migration project is best considered to be
closer to 12-15 hrs to be realistic, though I do realize as Mark
mentioned you can frequently cut that time down with both good
preparation and familiarity on how to accomplish more than one task
without getting out of the timeline.

2. I know it could look suspicious that a bunch of MVPs point you to a
site operated by an MVP and you wonder if this is odd. I hope you take a
moment to varify the suggestion to confirm it for yourself. If you want
to get a tour of the process in a webcast, you will find it here:

TS2 Wed on the Web: Platform Upgrading, Migrating,Transitioning
Strategies & Techniques
http://www.msreadiness.com/WS_abstract.asp?eid=15003706

Description:
In today's Wednesday on the Web with TS2, we will be exploring the
different methods for moving and upgrading to SBS 2003 from other
existing scenarios. Additionally, we will also be exploring the upgrade
and "transition" path from SBS 2003 to the full server platform. This
seminar should provide an overall upgrade path that will help guide your
small business customers in the right direction. Join the TS2 Team along
with Jeff Middleton (SBS MVP) and Guy Hay*** (Microsoft Senior Product
Manager) as we discuss these strategies and techniques.

I encourage anyone with that concern to go look in google to find
independent comments on Swing Migration, or if you like, you can go reach
out to an even larger circle of local community groups to not only ask
about Swing Migration, but also anything else you want to know. I have a
list of groups posted on my website because they provide even more forums
including local meetings around the world that help propell the best
practices and experiences forward. Take a look:

http://www.sbsmigration.com/it-pro-community.php

In addition, I want to invite anyone interested in worldwide discussion of
SBS in a live chat to come visit the monthly SBS Chat every 3rd Tuesday of
the month. This is the longest running chat on the planet, hosted by
HandyAndy Goodman...yet another SBS MVP, who takes time every month to
anchor a discussion where you pick the topic and the answers roll in from
everyone online instantly!

http://chat.sbsmigration.com/SBSchat/

- Jeff Middleton SBS-MVP
YCST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



"SuperGumby [SBS MVP]" <not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uozx60NvGHA.3264@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I hope Jeff doesn't mind me quoting something he recently posted. Keep in
mind this is in reply to another thread where all manner of discussion
has occured and parts are sorttta out of context. I found Jeff's
explanation/insight to be interesting.

---------Jeff-------
I wanted to jump in to comment about the recommendations you are
receiving to your request. SBSmigration.com is my website, the
documentation being discussed is my product, and the unique aspect of
this conversation as I read it is that I see you could conceivably feel
like you are being pushed in a direction you aren't interested in going.
Therefore, I want to offer some additional detail to what has already
been posted.

First, you posted a request for Swing Migration, but perhaps you didn't
know that this is a term than had no meaning relative to SBS deployments
and replacement until 2 yrs ago when it became de facto a moniker for the
process that I fully documented for the first time. Up to that time,
Microsoft offered nothing like this in the form of documentation, nor
would they then or will they now provide you support in doing a "Swing
Migration".

You could gain a little perspective on this topic if you simply go to
Google and search for SBS Migration and Jeff Middleton as author. You
will find that I have been talking about this process in the public
newsgroups going back 5 yrs. I have been pushing MS to embrace this idea
for that long, and always without success. You might note that I became
an MVP in 1999 primarily because of the time I spent posting answers to
questions in the newsgroups on many topics, not the least of which was
migration and DR strategies.

When MS released SBS 2003, they documented the following migration
methodologies:

In-Place Upgrade
Clean Install/OEM Install (related concepts)
ADMT Migration

After reviewing how that worked and the impact of it, I decided that I
would write a whitepaper on how to do an SBS migration by a different
and more sensible manner, what is now well known as Swing Migration. I
accumulated my own experience, combined it with authoritative KB
references from my research and sent it to MS for technical review,
comment, and the request that they publish it _for free_ as an MVP
whitepaper. After they reviewed it, they commented back to me favorably
about the concept and thanked me but declined to publish it. The
reasoning in a very short summary is that they did not want to support
the process I had outlined, even though that was not a comment about the
viability of the process. In fact, in general, if you ask someone
knowledgeable within MS about the process they will likely tell you it's
a pretty cool concept, and pretty neat that I actually included
reference to all the MS Kbs I researched to document the process. In
other words, they thought it was neat that I could frame the concept
based upon a wide range of documents that have nothing to do with SBS,
nothing to do with domain migration, Exchange migration, websites,
etc....and yet build a cohesive strategy document that is repeatable for
people worldwide with the widest variety of systems and situations.

The curious point is that like any project of this scale, sometimes
things don't go right, and sometimes things are in bad condition before
you even get started. Therefore, part of the logic of MS in their
decision not to support publishing a completed documentation outline is
that they already had documented how they would encourage folks to
approach this topic.

So at this point, I next took the manuscript to a friend who is a book
publisher, and the original draft of the process was published in a book
with 15 chapters, including two that I wrote. One is on Disaster
Recovery, the other is on Swing Migration. That is where the name came
into existance, when I called it that and explained it that way.

Mind you, many people who are sharp and studious have developed a lot of
the same concepts in their own trial and error testing over the years,
but I've yet to find anyone who found that to be trivial. I also haven't
met anyone who compiled it into a unified, start to finish, all
referenced project guide like I have. I'm not saying I invented
something nobody else could think of, but I did try to put it into
common use by writing original methodology and combining it with well
defined tasks outlined by MS KBs to encourage people to have trust in
the work.

So having added my two chapters to the work of 13 other people, if you
can justify $45 at Amazon, you can have a good book, an original draft
of the process, and my best regards. It's not like I didn't realize that
I was making that information available for a pretty cheap prices. In
fact, here's a real kick: I don't make a dime if you buy the book. But
it's out there for you, and most people can afford a book if they really
appreciate that it could be useful to them.

Books available from SMB Nation Press - Learn more from SMB Nation Press
"Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 Advanced Best Practices"


The next thing I did was to recognize that Swing Migration is a process
that is far more complex than most people realize. Why? Because it
covers a lot of ground, and it deals with not only building a new
server, it potentially deals with left over issues from the old server
and domain. Having already submitted the draft to the book publisher, I
was suddently overrun by requests from people who wanted me to provide
support for this concept...in case they had problems. So now I'm facing
the problem of having done all this original research, documented a
process that isn't supported by MS, and now I'm supposed to support it.
Now I ask you, should I do that for free? There's a point at which I
have to eat and pay my own bills, and it's not like I'm trying to be
unfair.

You can go to my website and see right there a step outline of what we
are talking about:


http://www.sbsmigration.com/migration-projects.php#what-is-a-swing-migration

You can see a complete outline of many aspects of what it can and can't
do, and you will not find that information anywhere on the MS
website....all of that is what I introduced to explain why this can work.

In order to give people confidence in this process, and to assure them
that I'm totally serious about giving the best support I can, I created
a website to allow people to order the Kit and pay for a lifetime
license to use the materials including the custom script tools I have
written. You buy it one time, and you are personally licensed to use
this forever on as many servers, domains, customers and projects that
you want. I expect you will bill for that. I expect you will make a lot
of money from using this process because it is ridiculously better than
what MS is offering you as a process. I provide with the purchase of the
$200 Technician Kit a 90 day period during which you can obtain
unlimited tech support toward completion of your first project by email.
That's direct support, unique to your project, and I don't constrain the
scope of that to "one SBS to one SBS". In fact, I have provided support
to people with a couple of Exchange Servers, and as many as 5-6 DCs.
I've assisted people moving entire business operations to another
location where a swing of new servers was involved, and I didn't change
them anything above the cost of the $200 Kit because I nevers saw
questions from them that seemed to me to be outside the scope of
replacing one or more servers in exactly the manner and outline that I
had already covered in my documentation.

I want to make sure you understand that my scope of project support is
that if I've covered in my documentation, I'm supporting to the best of
my ability when you contact me. You might want to double-check your
impression of what MS provides as support when you pay them $245 for a
support incident call. They cover one ISSUE, not the PROJECT. There's a
pretty big difference there.

The vast majority of people who value their time realize that once they
look at the Migration Projects page on my website, and do the math, they
will find that they probably save as much time on the first project and
as much headache for their customers that the Kit pays for itself before
you finish that job. From there, it's just more income for you to keep
on earning and skill for you to keep developing from your experience.

I am not offended if anyone decides that it's not worth $200 to have
unlimited tech support for presales, project planning, and full
transition to a new server deployment that works transparently at this
level. If that seems not to be worth it to you, I encourage you to go
take a glance at the book instead.

The reason you will find so many people endorsing the use of this
process is because it works, I support it, I continue to improve it, and
it's a good value for you, your customer and even for MS that I'm
helping people learn their way through the first job they take. Some
people come back and subscribe to obtain all of the scenario
documentation I've written and am continuing to update. Many people will
never use the MS documented approaches again.

Rather than just taking the word of a couple of people on this list,
MVPs or not, go search google for sbsmigration.com, or even "sbs
migration" and see if you don't find a lot of honest endorsements for
this all over.

The Technician Kit includes the 200 pgs of documentation discussed on the
website, plus an additional 200 pages of reference information specific
to this type of project. it's intended to provide the only references
you need. I hope I will have a chance to help you learn this process so
that you can spend your time billing customers for the skill you will
have learned, rather than spending time trying to research what is
already authoritatively demonstrated by people using my documentation to
be a great solution to use. Supporting people who want to learn Swing
Migration is pretty much my full time job, and I enjoy the opportunity
it has afforded me to make a lot of people happy and more successful in
their business. I really am offering an alternative to MS methodology,
and I put my time and reputation behind what I do.

- Jeff Middleton SBS-MVP

YCST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx




"Rick" <txgeek4@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1155255586.967639.120390@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
1st
I have a client with a SBS 2000 Dell server and 18 clients. They are
using it for exchange, file server, print server and application
server. I am working up a quote for them on replacing the server with
new hardware and while we are at it migrating up to SBS 2003. I've
found a 50 page white paper on this migration from Microsoft and it
looks to be pretty labor intensive to perform this migration. I'd like

to be able to estimate my time to do it this way, but do not want to
get in a situation that I end up going way over. I understand that
every situation is different, but I wanted to get an idea from others.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sbs/2003/deploy/sbs2k203...


Has anyone done one of these the MS way and how long did it take you?


2nd
I found this site SBS Migration and it talks about doing this via Swing

It!. Does anyone have experience going this route? Their site makes
it sound like this will be a 2-3 hour job and everything will be just
peachy. What's the scoop on this? http://www.sbsmigration.com/


3rd
What is the best practice for doing this type of migration? Where do I

find a write up on it?


Thanks In Advance
Rick


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