 Welcome to Designing and Implementing a Server Infrastructure. My name is Sandra Butekis and I will be your instructor throughout this course. I've had the pleasure of working with Microsoft operating systems and networking since my first MCSC and we're going back to DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1. You heard it. I've taken a few of these tests and been playing with the Microsoft infrastructures for quite a long time. All the years, not only have I had a chance to take these technologies into the classroom, but also outside of the classroom, I have a chance of running a consulting company in which I go into all of these different networks and implement exactly what it is we bring into the classroom. So based on that, sometimes you'll get some good style and stories or how things really, really work, but we're going to take a little bit of practical experience and mix it with what it is you need to know in order to start studying for your 70-413 test. In this module, we're going to cover Server Infrastructure, essentially focusing on upgrade and migration. We'll start off learning what it is to plan for deployment of Server 2012. We'll move through the different editions you have to pick from and what it is you need to use as a deciding factor for which edition it is that you require. We'll go through a summary of choices, move through pre-installation requirements, and then start going through where it is that you can do an upgrade. One is it best to do an upgrade in place on the same physical hardware as opposed to just installing new hardware with a new operating system. So we'll go through all of those so that we know you have up and running Server 2012, but then we'll start looking at roles, what can be migrated, what can't be migrated. So we'll go through so you know what it is you need to build new servers for and what it is of course you can migrate through in place. We'll also get a chance to look at some tools, specifically the Map Toolkit and the Windows Assessment and Deployment Toolkit. These tools give us another set of tools that allow us to really look at our network, decide where we are, where we need to go, and how it is we're going to get there. So we'll go through them as appropriate so that you know that you got a few things in the tool shed in order to help you with your migration. When you're planning for deployment, there's a number of bullet items that you need to look into. Planning for deployment isn't always as easy as saying, let's see what this does, throwing a new piece of hardware in place, and seeing what Server 2012 is all about. We're going to go through a lot of the following in great detail, but for right now let's gloss over where the steps are that you need to cover when you're planning. One of the first steps, of course, is choosing the appropriate edition. Remember Microsoft never just publishes an operating system in place as is. There's always professional, there's always home, there's always the server level when you deal with enterprise or ultimate, and there's all different types of editions, whether you're looking at the workstation editions and whether you're looking at the server editions. So we'll go through the editions in a little bit to explain what the differences are, but understand that yes, we are really focusing on server editions, but you still have to look at the workstations in your environment to make sure they can communicate with the servers that you're choosing. We also have to take a step back and decide whether or not a migration or an in-place upgrade is in order. Now an in-place upgrade is always good at its advantages because you put it in the CD-ROM and you physically upgrade the same hardware that was running an older operating system so you're not buying new hardware. But sometimes if it's too much work, if roles aren't going to migrate or upgrade properly or if the hardware, of course, is really nearing end of life, it may not be your best choice. So we'll go through some of the decision factors between migrating or in-place upgrades. What about the current infrastructure? Sometimes what you currently have in your network is perfect. You have a domain, it's a nice clean single domain model. You just need to add some new domain servers and decommission some of the old ones, but sometimes that's not necessarily the case. So before you start adding new servers, you may want to step back and look at what type of infrastructure you're starting with because this is the time to make the decision on whether or not this infrastructure is correct for you, not just today, but in the future. What is it and where is it that you're going with this company network? We'll go through our installation procedures. Now, I've already mentioned you can put the CD-ROM in and you can run setup because that's what most people think of when they think of an installation. But let's say you're doing a rollout of not just a server, you're going to go ahead and roll out 10 servers or 20 servers or 100 new servers and you're going to deploy them globally. I think maybe putting in the CD-ROM and answering the same questions over and over not only is repetitive and time consuming, but you may not get the consistency that you're looking for. So we'll get a chance to also look at the installation procedures to find one that might work for you. Once everything is installed in place, the job is never done. We still have a lot of planning to do. And when you think of planning, you think of before you do the install, but really planning has to extend beyond the install. How are we going to monitor it? How are we going to back it up? How are we going to restore it in case of emergency? Are there procedures in place? And of course, how is it going to be maintained? We're not talking about set Windows updates to automatic and walk away, because that doesn't always go that well. Sometimes there's a lot of testing to take place. So when you plan for deployment, there's a number of areas that you have to look at before you even think about putting that CD-ROM or that ISO file somewhere, trying to run a setup program. We have a lot of planning, but with great planning becomes great execution. So if you do it right, the rest will be relatively easy. We have in front of you four different Windows Server additions. We have Windows Server standard. We have the data center addition, a foundation, and essentials. So many things to pick from. Well, the first thing I will tell you is you want to look at how many users you are going to need to support today, and how many you're going to need to support two, three, four, five years from today. The number of users really should become your very, very first question, because something as simple as foundation, which can only support a maximum of 15 users. If you know that you're going to plan on hiring a few more, even if you don't think they need server intensive applications, right off the bat, that's not going to be the one for you. And the problem with that is, of course, you're going to be left with an operating system that isn't doing what you want to do. So the cost is going to far exceed the benefit of getting something like a foundation when you have to replace and rework the whole wheel. So always look at the number of users first. Number of users are going to automatically exclude or include some of these additions. So let's take a look at each one of them separately. We have standard. Standard is we get all roles in all features that are available to server 2012. That's important because some of them have limited server roles. So if you think you need to deploy, failover clustering, you got to make sure that the addition you choose actually supports it. So all roles and features are available in standard. We have 64 sockets for CPUs. You can do up to four terabytes of memory. And we also have two virtual machine licenses. So this right here sometimes is my deciding factor between standard and a data center. So virtual machine licenses means a Windows server does come with a role called Hyper-V. Hyper-V allows you to virtualize many different server roles. So that you can essentially have other servers on the network or do a little bit of isolation or sometimes it's simply for testing. So if you don't plan on virtualizing a large set of servers in your environment, but you do need a small testing environment, this actually has all that you need. With 64 sockets and four terabytes of memory, you know that you can pretty much satisfy a majority of users and most organizations and applications, four terabytes of memory is an awful lot of memory. Now remember, everything that we do for the record is also now going to be 64 bit. So we're no longer looking at some of the memory limitations that we used to have when we had 32 bit servers. So what makes the difference between standard and data center? When you look at data center, again, all roles and features are available. So so far, just like standard, we can do 64 sockets. So that's about the same, but take a look here, we can go up to 640 processor cores. So when you run something like data center, you really are looking at literally something you would put into a data center with a whole lot of virtual machines. Now again, we do have four terabytes of RAM, so that's fine. Meaning you're not going to max out the memory, at least I hope not on either one of these additions. But here really is a big factor that's going to separate it from standard. Of course, the number of processor cores are greater than standard, but unlimited virtual machine that licenses any virtual machine to run the same hardware. So what does that really mean? Well, if you have Hyper-V, and I have this in a number of places, I currently am running Hyper-V in a large organization, and we had to migrate 20 servers, but we needed some flexibility on migrating these servers. And when I say flexibility, we're talking, we wanted to start moving things around, but by the time we were done buying operating system license after operating system license, after operating system license, it became cheaper to buy data center, get unlimited software licenses, instead of adding, let's say, 15 new standard or 20 new standard and also having the hardware to boot. So I had one beefy machine, and then off of that machine, I can run all of the virtual machines for all of the different servers in the organization. So data center is going to run much, much, much more expensive, but when you run data center, you're going to spend less money on hardware, and I say that carefully because of course it depends on the server that you build, but you're building one beefy piece of server as opposed to buying hardware for, let's say, 20 or 30 servers, and then your operating system licenses to run Windows server are going to be built into that cost. So if you have enough servers, it makes more sense for you to run data center. So standard we use in a majority of networks, big and small. Data center is when the cost of software and hardware start to outweigh how many standard servers versus let's put it all in one area. Now we're going to move to what I call the small networking components. So let's say a Windows server foundation. You just need a simple file server to support a handful of users. It is not intensive with applications. So your processor core, how much memory you need, and even to today's standards, that's really not bad. I run plenty of servers with less than 32 gigs of RAM, and you don't really need everything that server has to offer. So when you look at foundation, it does have limited server roles. So if you are thinking, I only have five users and we basically need to log in and have a file share, make sure you do your homework on what roles you might need and which ones are included within foundation and not, meaning be very, very clear on what you need in your plan. We also have essentials. And essentials is basically what we used to have as small business server. So when we had small business server, otherwise known as SBS, we had a little piece of everything server had to offer. When I mean that, I mean we had a domain controller service. We could run SQL server. It had Exchange in it. So instead of having to buy a few thousand dollars worth of SQL server and a few thousand dollars worth of this Exchange server and the Exchange client licenses, and then of course the Windows software, for a small business who needs to run a lot of these core applications, it would be cost prohibitive in order to actually use them in-house. But if you buy small business server, they're wrapped right into that product. But what's missing? Well, you're not going to virtualize any other servers. You're not going to fail over clustering. You're not going to run SBS on server core and it can't be a remote desktop services server. But again, if you have a small company, less than 25 users, you need SQL server and or Microsoft Exchange for your email, then this might be the product that you pick. Again, this is the equivalent to the old SBS. Up to 50 devices. Workstation server, what have you. Two processor cores, 64 gig of RAM. And it does have to be the root server in the domain. Now what we really mean about that is, I guess to make it nice and simple, it is the domain. So this is your root server, the one simple domain model. We, in another module within a course, will talk about what a logical structure is. But just now to feed that a little bit, you can't have a root domain headquarters.local and then have your SBS domain as a child domain off of that. That will not work in this scenario. So it has to be a root domain. It's basically a single domain answer to a small network. So again, foundation, real simple, almost good for a web server or a test server or just a couple of users who have very minimal requirements. We move to essentials, which is our old SBS, just given a different name, why they have to keep renaming them, I don't know. I'm thinking Windows Server 2012 SBS is something we can all understand because that's what they've always called it. But then in a standard networking environment, standard can meet most of the hardware. But if you get to the point where you're paying so much in physical servers and software licenses, you might wanna take that one step further and create data center. So let's summarize some of our choices. First off, when you're looking at the difference between data center and standard, how is it that you choose? Well, for me, my choice is based on two different things. The first one is how many physical servers do I think I need or am I trying to host and what are the costs to buy, let's say 30 physical servers and 30 Windows Server operating system licenses and then the client access licenses? So that's always my first and most definitive. But beyond that, it's really how many virtual machines? So the two are kind of related because when you have data center, you virtualize everything so you're not buying 20 or 30 different servers. You have one server that virtually hosts all the other servers. So you can really take your choice summary here down to how many virtualized servers do you need to run in Hyper-V? Remember, Windows Server 2012 Essentials is you have a handful of users, maybe they just wanna share some files and have a common place for backup. That's when you're going to take on Essentials. Now, with Essentials, remember, you're looking at that, you're looking at 15 to 25 users when you look at the SPS version and the Essentials versions, those are kind of our two small business packages. How many users? Do you have any virtualization requirements? Do you have to run Server Core? And as long as the answer is no to all of those, you have an ability to choose between the smaller additions within Windows Server. So just to make sure we're clear, Essentials is less than 25 users. You can't virtualize, you can't run Core. If you're looking at foundations, the smallest organizations, you're not gonna run Active Directory, you've got a handful of users, maybe they just wanna share some files and really where you're going to get foundation is usually through OEM programs, meaning you're going to buy them shrink wrapped with a small server with the original equipment manufacturer. Pre-installation requirements. This really is a very simple slide and I'd just like to make sure we're all very clear on what I mean by it. Do I need an X64 processor? Absolutely. It has to be 1.4 gigahertz. That's really not much according to today's standards. I only need 512 megs. I only need 32 gigs of RAM. This is your minimum requirements and you want to stay away from them. And when I say stay away, it means I know that even in a small network with two, three, four, five users, trying to run a full-blown server on these specs isn't gonna work. You will cry. You will cry almost immediately because it's just not gonna have what you need. Can you get it installed? Absolutely. When you look at the test and it asks you the bare bones minimum requirements to run server 2012, here are your answers. But I wouldn't go anywhere near these. I would double the processor speed to the highest processor you can find. Memory, realistically, I would go 16 to 32 gig. Now, I say that lightly because I don't even know what you're gonna put on that server that you're taking the course to learn all about. But I know just for an average server to authenticate and do file share and some of the core role services, you're gonna wanna make sure that that's beefed up. Hard drive space. If I was to ever partition the C drive on 32 gigs and install the operating system within three windows updates, I would already be out of space. So let's assume maybe you're doing an upgrade. How much more should you have free? But you don't wanna just put this on a hard drive with 32 gig. Is it the minimum? Yes, it's the minimum. Stay away. Make sure that you've got everything. On hard drives nowadays, if it is an operating system partition, maybe I would do 500 gig minimum. You could go smaller. Again, it really depends on your organization. You still have to find out what roles you're installing, how many users, whether applications will be installed on that server. So bare bone spec says you're gonna install an operating system and not do anything with it. In addition, you have to plan for everything else that'll go on this server. Let's look at what you can upgrade to server 2012. First off, can you upgrade Windows Server 2003 X64 additions? Absolutely. Should you? I don't think so. I always look at this right here. One, we're filming this course. It is currently the end of 2013. So we are looking at hardware that could potentially be 10 years old. I would never invest the time or the effort into any hardware that's 10 years old because it probably isn't up to par. Now, that's not to say that you're running Server 2003 on newer hardware for backwards compatibility reasons. That might be a different story, but a majority of the time, I'm not sure that I would upgrade based on the age of the hardware itself. We can also upgrade Server 2008 as long as we're service-packed to or released to. It does have to be the same processor architecture, which means if you have a 32-bit machine and you're hoping to go to a 64-bit, that's not gonna work. So you have to make sure that you're running the same processor architecture that you're really dealing with a 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003. You also need the same or higher addition. So let's say you are running Data Center for 2003 and you wish to upgrade to Server 2012 Standard. That's not gonna work. I would have to go from Data Center to Data Center or Standard to Standard or Standard up to Data Center. So you can go same or higher, you can't go lower. So what about some of the other factors that we might wanna take a look at? So when you're looking at the hardware requirements and you're looking at what it is you're trying to run and then of course you look at the different upgrades, you have to make sure you know what it is you're upgrading. What was running on any of these servers and is that something that you can upgrade in place? You also wanna see whether or not you need high availability. If you need high availability and you're trying to do an upgrade, you have to make sure your version's correct and you also really have to look at the hardware to make sure the hardware that you've chosen is going to be fine as well. So what can you upgrade? It's all right here. What should you upgrade? Well, look at the hardware, look at what you're trying to accomplish, look at the applications, what you're trying to accomplish. How about the user load and make sure you know exactly where you're starting and where you need to go to? So when you talk about an upgrade, you're not talking about adding a new server and upgrading what was running on the old server, you're talking about an in-place upgrade for files and settings and applications. So yes, you need to look at the operating system versions but you also have to again look at what's on that server and whether it can be upgraded. There might be an application that can't be upgraded and maybe you have to upgrade the application first. So yes, you can go from standard to standard, you can go from standard on up to data center. In fact, you can even do something like Windows Web Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2012 standard. And I'm just gonna write that down because sometimes you can hear it but not see it. So 2008 R2 to standard for version 2012. Well, that's not a lateral upgrade but actually it is because we don't have Windows Server 2012 web server. So what is the closest equivalent to web server? So we do have a lot of those types of options with the upgrade and then within those options, once you know the operating system addition, let's look at the file settings. How is it that you're sharing your files? What type of technology are you using? Are you just right-click and sharing? Are you using DFS? Is there a third-party application? And what about the applications that happen to be on there? Now, the whole point of doing an upgrade in place is so that you could keep everything that you currently have with the least amount of stress. How do you upgrade? Nice and simple. Run setup.exe. As long as you've got the right addition to the right addition and you know the application requirements are there, the rest is taken care of just by running the setup program. Again, whether or not you can upgrade it based on the addition is great but make sure you've met all of these. Not just remember, not just to get the operating system on there but plan ahead. What else is going on there? What else is running on there? Again, make sure the software supports it. Make sure the roles and features that you're bringing over support it as well. So just before we leave this slide, let's put down some options because I keep saying software, software, software, hardware, hardware. Give me some examples. Well, some of the software and you've got to list them all out. Maybe you're running SQL. Maybe you're running Exchange. Maybe you have antivirus running. Actually, you should have be having antivirus running. So are those going to support your in-place upgrade? We're not just talking about Microsoft Word. Now, what about the user data? Are we going to keep them in the same place? Are the permissions all going to be the same? And again, we're looking at roles and features. Active Directory, Directory Services. That's a big one. DNS, that's a big one. DHCP, are we keeping those in place as well? So how are we going to do the upgrade and how are we going to make sure that those roles come back up and support the same way they've always supported? When you're migrating to Windows Server 2012, one of the biggest reasons for migration is because you're coming from a 32-bit operating system and you can't upgrade that in place. So migrations sometimes are because you're moving from the x86 processor architecture to the x64 versions of Windows Server. Also, when you're doing a migration, there's a whole lot of tools that are available for you. So let's say I'm just migrating and happens to be a printer server. Well, we have server migration tools that help me migrate that role from one piece of hardware to the next. So we can use the migration tools feature when you're migrating from any of the x86 versions, specifically 2003, 2003 R2, 2008 or 2008 R2. So it recognizes those four versions and or additions and if they happen to be running on 32-bit hardware, the migration tools feature will help you migrate them over to the new hardware. Now the software migration sometimes is a little bit different. That's done in a separate environment. So if you happen to have software running in Windows Server, let's say I'm running Server 2003 R2, it happens to be running Exchange Server. Well, I can't just migrate that over by using a tool. I have to actually use the Exchange tools and look at that as an entirely separate subject physically installing Exchange on the new server, migrating the mailboxes and all the email rolls over. So the software product migration is in fact handled separately in a separate set of steps in a separate environment. We're just talking about the actual operating system itself. When you're migrating the server roles features in all of the settings, again that can be done in a separate environment and the whole point is if you're going to migrate to Windows Server 2012, this means we're rolling out Server 2012. It does not currently affect our infrastructure. It's just the addition of new servers. There are certain roles that can be migrated and there are certain roles that cannot be. The roles that can be migrated off of the 2003 and 2008 editions are WSUS, Print and Document Services, Hyper-V, the Active Directory Federation Role Services, Network Policy Server, and Remote Access. So those six roles in particular can easily be migrated over by using some of the Server 2012 migration tools. Now if you need to do a little bit more reading on certain roles and what it takes to migrate them over some of the planning curves, go on up to the web on technet microsoft.com. You will be able to search for roles and migrations for Server 2012 and see what other steps you may or may not have to do. The full URL is technet.microsoft.com and we do slash en-us for English slash library and we can find the article from there 134039. Now I would rather go to technet and search for it because I do find that sometimes the direct links change on a regular basis. When you're migrating roles, make sure that you put a lot of planning into this. You can migrate and also combine more than one role on a single server, but you wanna make sure that you're not affecting the performance or the disk usage of the server when you combine them. An example, I would not add two roles that are CPU intensive on the same server. Maybe one that's CPU intensive, maybe not disk intensive, and then maybe another role would be more disk intensive, not necessarily CPU intensive. So you're trying to balance those roles out so that you're not absolutely squashing one element of hardware when under utilizing another. You also wanna make sure that co-hosting of those roles are going to be supported. So make sure you look up each role and make sure that it doesn't conflict with a role that you're hoping to combine it with. And last but not least, take a look at high availability. If you need to configure high availability on that server, there are some roles that work well with clustering and some roles that do not. So make sure you are aware of the high availability configuration that you need and whether or not it has specific requirements that can be met by all roles on that server. We have some tools that are available for download from Microsoft.com. The first one I want to talk about is our Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, otherwise known as Map Toolkit. What Map Toolkit allows you to do is to take a full inventory of your IT infrastructure. Once it's taken the inventory, there's a ton of reports. Those ports help you for planning when you're looking at what roles you have and what's installed and where it's installed. It'll also allow you to run some performance statistics of your current infrastructure. So you don't wanna migrate to a new infrastructure to find out that you're not getting better performance. And it also gives you the tools you need to plan out what if you're gonna take a physical server and migrate it to a virtual server on Hyper-V, so the Map Toolkit helps you plan through that as well. So what the Toolkit is all about is to do, again, all the research for you. Instead of you sitting server by server by server by server and trying to discover all of this, it's going to find it for you, report it for you, give you the statistics you need and any information for physical to virtual migrations.