Resolved SBS 2003 > 2008 Migration - Windows SBS 2003 Service Pack 1 not installed

Hey,

So after a year or so of looking into it we're finally migrating from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008. I've been following Microsoft white paper on doing the migration, and per the instructions in there I've run the "Windows SBS Best Practice Analyzer" to make sure everything is ok with our current server.
I was expecting a lot more errors, but it only give 6. Most of the errors can be ignored but one that is standing out is "Windows SBS 2003 Service Pack 1 not installed ".


This is quite an old 2003 server (migrated to from NT) and is running 2003 SBS Premium R1 (or the non R2 version anyway ). The server is patched up to SP2, but for whatever reason we just skipped SP1. It looks like this skipping of the SP may be coming back to haunt me now, but is it really going to be an issue?


I've done some googling and there are other people that have had this same query, but no one has had a specific answer. Some people have said that SBS SP2 definitely doesn't include SBS SP1, whilst others have said that it should include it. Microsoft say that you must install SP1 before SP2, before migrating to 2008.

From what I understand, SP1 updated a bunch of the other parts of SBS and not just the OS (like Exchange, IIS, etc), whilst SP2 was mainly OS.

Although we use a lot of the features of SBS pretty extensively, the only things we're really bothered about maintaining during the migration are AD and Exchange. I did update Exchange to SP2 a few months ago.

Am I going to need to hack around with this old server, getting SP1 installed over SP2, just for this migration or should I be able to get away with it this time?

I would just go for the migration and hope for the best, but the warning from the Best Practices thing and that Microsoft say SP1 must be installed are a bit concerning.

So.. anyone got any advise, or experience regarding this problem?

 

First things first.... Backup. I've had to roll back a couple of SBS systems over the last year and install SP1 before SP2. I think there are some very basic upgrades in SP1 which are needed for migration to 2008 and I certainly wouldn't attempt them without. Even with SP1 & 2 installed the migration isn't as straight forward as Microsofts guides make them out to be either.

 

I just wanted to give an update on this for anyone else that has queries about this. I attempted to do the migration without installing SP1 onto the server whilst following the Microsoft Whitepaper.

We do daily backups of the server, so I wasn't overly worried about if something got completely ******* up as we could always roll back to that. I also made sure that, as far as Windows Update was concerned, the server was fully up to date.


Anyways.. The migration tool that is installed onto the source server complained about the lack of of SP1 being installed and wouldn't let me continue. The whitepaper gives the registry key that the tool looks for, so I just created that, ran the tool again and it did it's job.

I then did the Server 08 install and let the migration task do it's job. That all worked fine and everything appeared to be ok. AD was replicated without a problem, GPO's got applied and people complained about being forced to reset their passwords. Unfortunately a major problem did crop up with Exchange and the only solution is to restore the source server and reinstall 08. I really don't want to restore the source server, so I've rolled back the changes the migration tool did to the domain and I'm now building a new domain and will start from scratch.

The problems that have happened in Exchange are down to something else and are unrelated to the lack of SP1. I've only done limited testing with everything else and the lack of SP1 doesn't appear to have caused any issues, but I've obviously not completed the migration so can't be 100% sure.

For anyone that does read this and is considering doing the SBS migration, with or without SP1, I wouldn't. I'd either look into doing a Swing migration (sounds quite cool but I don't have the time to start researching it fully), or just build a new domain from scratch.