The Cloud on Your Terms Part 5 of 30: Are your Servers Ready For the Cloud?

In our last few posts we have taken a look at some of concepts and technologies behind the cloud.   In this post we are going to take a look at your servers and your core infrastructure.  Often times I think we get all excited coming technologies then we realize we are still running Windows NT 3.51.  Okay maybe not 3.51 but the main point is as great as the future of the IT looks, we still need to remember the basics.  Just like in football were have blocking and tackling, our servers provide the building blocks for all the wonderful tools and technologies.  We have to make sure they are up to speed with current technologies, and if you have older server’s in your environment how effective (if at all) can you be when your company makes the decision to go to a cloud infrastructure.   

Like Kevin’s post yesterday talked a lot about the future of System Center, the only way to have a fully featured cloud environment is to make sure your servers are up to Windows Server 2008 R2.  Especially since SP1 is out, it has a lot of exciting technologies that will help you evolve your datacenter to the next generation.   Hopefully most of you are looking or already migrating to Windows Server 2008 R2.  If you have moved you have already started to see a lot of the benefits.  Additionally if you are just looking for the new functionality of Hyper-V there is our free offering in the form of  Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 (check it out a great server!)  

Fortunately if you are looking to migrate your servers to Windows Server 2008 R2 there is a lot of help.  Not only in the form of great step by step guides but also a migration toolset.  So if you are looking to migrate any of these server roles there is a ton of help:

• Active Directory Certificate Services Migration Guide
• Active Directory Domain Services and Domain Name System (DNS) Server Migration Guide
• BranchCache Migration Guide
• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Server Migration Guide
• File Services Migration Guide
• Hyper-V Migration Guide
• Health Registration Authority Migration Guide
• Network Policy Server Migration Guide
• Routing and Remote Access Server Migration Guide
• Remote Desktop Services Migration Guides
• Print Services Migration Guide
• Windows Server Update Services 3.0 SP2 Migration Guide
• IP Configuration Migration Guide
• Local User and Group Migration Guide

I did a screencast a while back  that shows how to install the migration tools.  The migration tools are core tool set to help you with migrating your server workloads:

As I mentioned in part 1 we are going to be posting the series across 4 blogs: Brian Lewis, John Weston, Kevin Remde and myself. Let us know what you think of the posts and if you think of topic let us know!   If you happen to miss a part and want to get caught up. You can find all the parts of the series here: Cloud on Your Terms: 30 Days about the Cloud

Additional Migration Resources:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration tools: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd365353(WS.10).aspx
• Chapters 1 & 2 of My Book: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Administration Instant Reference
• Screencast on migrating DHCP: https://edge.technet.com/Media/Migrating-DHCP-using-the-Windows-Server-2008-R2-Migration-Tools/