SBS 2003 to Office365+Essentials 2012?

ubersonic · 23 Apr 2014 at 11:28

Hey all, scrapping out a SBS2003 system, only around 10-15 users, going to migrate the Exchange 2003 email to Office 365 which means the SBS box will only be doing AD, DHCP, local DNS, file storage, backup, etc. plan is to switch it to an Essentials 2k12 machine or if that wont work a full server 2k12 standard machine.

Am I right in thinking that after email has gone off site I can just join the new server to the domain then transfer over the roles/files and dcpromote the SBS box out of the domain?

Thanks.

leigh_boy · 23 Apr 2014 at 11:37

Am I right in thinking that after email has gone off site I can just join the new server to the domain then transfer over the roles/files and dcpromote the SBS box out of the domain?

email will be off site if you have gone with a hosted solution.
as for moving the roles and files over. with not that many users i would start again. so that you can take on the higher forest level of the domain.

ubersonic · 23 Apr 2014 at 11:43

You reckon I should just go with a cutoff instead of migrating AD and stuff then? replicate the files over, re create the users and join all machines to new domain?

leigh_boy · 23 Apr 2014 at 13:06

thats what i would do as its not many users at all. copy all the data over, remove from network and create a new domain
haveing the newer forest type allows extra features / future profing a bit more.

jameshurrell · 23 Apr 2014 at 14:14

Agreed - with so few users, start again with Server 2012 R2 (essentials or standard). Just the short term pain of removing the clients from the old domain (make sure you have a local user account set up to access the workstation once it has been removed) and rejoining them to the new...