Win2k8->2k16 Server in-place upgrade?

[dave_the_nerd]

Has anybody done this? Microsoft says it only works 2k8->2k12 and 2k12->2k16.

Trying to get all our systems off of 2k8 and there are a couple boxes where it would be easier to do an in-place update. Nothing I can't rebuild/migrate if I have to, but I'd like to git'r'dun.

Win7->10 in-place worked, so I was wondering if anybody had tried it with the equivalent server OSes.

TIA

 

[XavierMace]

The thought of doing an in place upgrade makes me shudder. I wouldn't even try it on a domain controller. I just rebuilt all my monitoring servers over the weekend.

 

[JackMDS]

This is MS general approach to Upgrade server.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/installation-and-upgrade

FWIW, this is a new - https://mcpmag.com/articles/2018/01/24/in-place-upgrades-windows-server.aspx

 

[sourceninja]

Some systems should never be upgraded in place IMHO. Domain controllers, exchange, sharepoint, etc are some of those things. So it depends on what the server is doing.

 

[mikeymikec]

I think if there was some way of imaging the server to a VM, do a test upgrade on that, have a group of test clients connect to its resources to check all of that works, then I'd be inclined to try it. Otherwise it just seems like a recipe for unexpected downtime when something goes fubar enough to make me think of clean installing.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Some systems should never be upgraded in place IMHO. Domain controllers, exchange, sharepoint, etc are some of those things. So it depends on what the server is doing.

I think if there was some way of imaging the server to a VM, do a test upgrade on that, have a group of test clients connect to its resources to check all of that works, then I'd be inclined to try it. Otherwise it just seems like a recipe for unexpected downtime when something goes fubar enough to make me think of clean installing.

It's already a VM. Doing a snapshot pre-upgrade and rolling back if I have to is part of the plan.

As far as what the server does: it's got one SMB share where our other systems dump files (sql dumps mostly) and then the VM is running the Symantec Backup Client - the data gets copied to the DR system IT maintains. So it should be fairly straightforward. Downtime is no problem, since the actual activity is all between midnight and 5AM. Outside of that, I can do whatever I want to the poor thing.

The only reason I want to upgrade is because we're moving to use Puppet for installing Windows patches and it requires at least 2k12. I could certainly spin up a new VM and have it take over (I did that with a couple other systems last week, and will again this week - I've got a list!), I just don't really want to have to wait in line for IT to configure their backup stuff on the new box.