Hi folks,

As promised here is Part 1 of my Windows Server 2003 R2 blogcast series.  In this session I focus on what you need to think about when performing an upgrade to R2 from Windows Server 2003 SP1.  Now there are a couple of things I left out that I wanted to mention here.

• Server Preparation - In the session I mention some things you need to consider when upgrading a server.  I forgot to mention a couple of key components of this.  First of all all make sure you have a full backup of the server including the system state. This is really important and should just be part of your day to day activities but nonetheless worth mentioning here.
  •  If the server is an Active Directory domain controller and the AD schema version is earier than the R2 schema then setup will not be able to continue.  In this case you wil need to run an adprep.exe /forestprep to prepare the domain controller for the upgrade.  This will need to be performed on the server that is the schema operations manager and you should use the Adprep tool that comes on the R2 product CD in the \Cmpnents\r2\adprep directory.
  • R2 includes approximately 20 new optional components and among those 3 of have feature that require extensions to the AD schema.  These components are: Distributed File System Replication Servces (DFS-R);  Identity Management for Unix and the Print Management Console.  The schema master is only upgraded under the following conditions:
    • Enabling the new R2 features in your environment
    • Upgrading a Windows Server 2003 domain controller to R2
    • Performing a Windows Server 2003 R2 clean installation

With that said onto the blogcast!  To watch the blogcast click on the picture below!

In Part 2 I'm going to take you through the components that we added during the upgrade I did in the first session.

Enjoy!