To make this a perfect weekend, I would have not been at work at all. But, alas, I was at work. This weekend was the big one for BSi Grafton–moving to the new domain. Now, before I continue my story, here’s some things you need to know (the “prereqs”) :

• Our old domain was running on Small Business Server 2003. A cool OS, but not for 30 people.
• SBS 2003 lets you have only one server in a domain (itself)–that’s just the nature of SBS 2003.
• The server on this domain had a bad habit of blue screening and rebooting every two weeks or so. Upon boot up, the server would scan our DAS (all 1.5TB of it), and take sometimes up to an hour to boot.
• The task for this weekend: migrate from our old domain to a new, way more awesome and ready to expand on demand domain.

Let’s start from the beginning. All last week I was getting ready for the big move this weekend. When I started looking into how everything was going to be done, I realized almost instantly that having SBS 2003 was a major stumbling block. Small Business Server has a lot of limitations built into it (on top of all it’s other features). “Little” things like the inability to form trusts with other domains, or have more than one SBS server in the same domain, just to name a few. So when I wanted to one-click copy all of the user accounts from the old domain to the new, I was presented with a nasty error: “You cannot create a trust relationship with a Small Business Server.”

Crap. That means one thing: lots of manual typing.

I figured it couldn’t get much worse, so I typed away and had everyone (and I mean everyone) re-added to the new domain. Once that was finished, I was ready to tackle the next big thing: migrating to Exchange 2007. Except there’s a couple problems:

• Exchange 2007 has no direct in-place upgrade path from Exchange 2003.
• Even if it did, SBS 2003 can’t join the new domain to allow it.
• PST importing isn’t supported with Exchange 2007.

Solution? Again, not pretty, but plenty of manual work. I fired up Exmerge on the old domain controller, exported all the mailboxes to PST’s, then once I had all the computers up and running, I went around to each one and manually imported the PST through Outlook back to the server.

Again, I got really good at (and tired of) this, and figured that things couldn’t get much worse.

I do some other work, the new domain is up and running, and everyone can log in. I decide to demote the old SBS server so I can kill the old domain (because it’s now useless). After attempting to take down the domain several times (and failing with odd errors), I discover the dcpromo /forceremove command that Microsoft recommends if such wierdness occurrs. Basically it rips Active Directory right out of the server’s hands, leaving everything else in tact (even the software associated with AD).

I start this program, and it runs. For quite some time. An hour and a half, in fact. Before the system bluescreens. Ironically enough, however, when the server came back up, it didn’t scan the DAS. It also wasn’t a part of the domain any more. I don’t think a BSOD was part of the forceremove process, but so far it looked like it didn’t hurt anything.

I then decide to add the server to the new domain. This server still contains all the project files, and having it on a different domain would cause a plethora of login issues. I add the server, thinking SBS will complain if I can’t. It joins. I reboot. Again, it doesn’t scan the DAS, and the server is back up in record time (5-8 minutes, as compared to the 15 minutes in the past). I log in, and the server is now happily a part of the new domain. I walk back to my office, and prep the server for the new domain over Remote Desktop.

Quite some time later, I was working on that server, resetting permissions on some folders so people in the new domain could read it. Suddenly the screen disappears. I try to ping the server, and I get no response. I walk into the server room, and I witness something amazing. Instead of the server bluescreening, it shuts down gracefully. It’s like the server had a complete change of heart–quick start ups, and graceful shut downs. I look at the server, turn it back on, and wonder what happened. I think at that point I attributed the problem to the fact that I was doing a lot of writing to the DAS and the server shut down for some reason.

Everything is normal again, until about a couple hours later when the server does it again. I was working in another window, and suddenly the Remote Desktop window disappeared. Try a ping, doesn’t work. Walk to the server room, and behold, the server is sitting there, turned off. I turn it back on, walk back to my desk, and do some event log sleuthing. At first I didn’t see anything but some Exchange errors, so I turned off all Exchange services (we had a new Exchange server anyway). Everything goes fine (and the server runs better because the Information Store isn’t hogging memory anymore). I keep working, my focus on getting Push mail working again. I leave work for a bit, just for a change of scenery, and come back. The server is off once again.

I turn the server back on, and dig deeper in the event logs. Finally I come to a service I didn’t recognize: SBCore. I open it. I read it. I become sad.

It doesn’t get much more straightforward than that.

Doing more research, I found on a Microsoft forums what part of the EULA I was breaking:

…that would violate the SBS EULA (which requires that a SBS machine be PDC)…

Well, I wasn’t about ready to make this server the primary domain controller. And removing it from the domain would not solve any of my problems.

Solution? First, I take back all the times I thought it couldn’t get worse. I’m not even saying it this time around.

This server is getting an upgrade. To a real Windows Server 2003. The upside is I’m saving myself work in the future, and I’m building in some nice redundancy at this site. The downside? It’s 9:10 PM on a Sunday night and I’ve got a server reload ahead of me.

Oh, it’s been a hell of a weekend. And SBS is no longer my friend. Good riddance.

Either way, my new domain is up, and it’s very exciting to have a server down and still have the core functions of the rest of the network working fine. On top of all that, this server is actually 64 bit! Now I get to install a 64 bit OS on it!

I’m envisioning this more or less like an actual server crash. Except everything is slow motion and I’m able to save anything I want, as long as I do it in 1 hour increments.

Where’s that Mountain Dew?

~Jaker