Microsoft Azure AZ-801 — Section 16: Migrate workloads from previous versions to Server 2022, IIS workloads, & AD DS

93. Understanding migration of IIS, Hyper-V, RDS, DHCP, and print services

Let’s get into the concepts now of migration of IIS, Hyper-V, RDS, DHCP and print servers. We’ll start with the fact that Windows Server does have what is known as the Windows Server migration tools.

Now, ultimately our goal here is that we are looking to move services from one server to another and this can happen in various circumstances. One circumstance could be we just want to get certain services off of one server over to another server and that might be a situation where they’re the exact same version of server, right? It doesn’t necessarily have to be an older version or a newer version. However, in a lot of circumstances it could be that you’ve got an older server and you’re looking to move the services over to a newer server. It might be time to basically retire. That older server could also be that you are wanting to migrate into the cloud service and if you did have like an Azure connection, some kind of VPN gateway into Azure, or, maybe, you’ve got, you know, an ExpressRoute or something like that directly into Azure and you’ve set up a Windows Server virtual machine, you could migrate the service just as though it was a physical server in your on-premises environment. But to, to start here we have what is called window server migration tools.

This is a basically a feature that you can install onto a server and it will allow you to migrate different server roles, different features, your operating system settings, data, you can migrate shares and all of that and it’ll let you migrate again two versions of server that are the same version or even newer versions if you need to. And it can vary very easily, be installed right through the add roles and features wizard. It can also install through PowerShell. All right.

So, it’s relatively easy to install and it’s actually relatively easy to use. In fact, you’ll be surprised, I think, at how easy it is to migrate a lot of these services, a lot easier than it was, let’s say, 15 years ago to get services from one server to the other. All right. Let’s take a look at it is here first.

What is internet information services? And that is always been Microsoft’s web server. Right. And so if you’re going to if you’re hosting a Web application or a website or whatever in the Microsoft server environment, you would generally be using IIS right now with ICE, though, you can use the server migration tools to migrate some of the settings and data and stuff.

Ultimately, there is a little tool you can download called Web deploy that’s going to make life a lot easier. You literally can go to Google or being into search for the words download Web, deploy IIS, and you’ll see that you can download the latest version of it. This is going to allow you to basically synchronize your applications from one IIS environment over to another environment. All right. So, it’s going to transfer and synchronize your data, synchronize your site settings, all of that stuff. And it can do this automatically, including synchronizing the configurations. It can synchronize your certificates and all of that. You can even decide specifically which site you could actually have the have one website named one thing and synchronize to a different website with a different name if you wanted. So, it’s a really great way of, of basically synchronizing, replicating your data over it includes registry settings and all of that, some of the other features that it has.

So, seamless integration for the IIS Manager Visual Studio. It basically is able to create a little package that the package is what’s moved over. So, you’re basically creating a package and then that package gets extracted on the other end and it also packages up databases involving the website as well. All right. And these little packages are basically like little zip files that get zipped up. The other thing that’s great about it is that you don’t necessarily have to have admin rights.

So, a regular, a low level, lower level admin could do this. You wouldn’t require admin rights. Essentially, you are going to need read access to everything, but you don’t necessarily have to have admin rights to everything. All right. This also integrates with the web management services. If you’ve ever used the IIS web management service for managing is you can use that and this will automatically gather up any of the STL or TLS related certificate stuff. So, your transport layer security and all of that stuff, certificates if you need to. All right. It also acts as a way of backing up your website so you can actually use web deploy as a way to package up a website in its databases just for backup purposes. So, that’s another little feature that it comes with. All right. So, this web deploys very easy little tool to use. You’d be pretty surprised how easy it is to do this.

What about Hyper-V? Now, Hyper-V has had various ways of migrating stuff from one server to the other for many, many years. Well, one form of migration is you can do an in place upgrade in place upgrade isn’t like a true migration in that aspect of your you’re moving from one server to the other. That’s more just an upgrade, right? So you upgrade from an older operating system to a newer operating system and your services go with it. There is what is called a cross version live migration. So, that’s a nice little feature.

Now, what that is, is your virtual machines don’t even have to be shut down. You literally can have your virtual machines migrated from one Hyper-V server to the other. So, you have to have both Hyper-V servers up and running. The virtual machines can stay running. You could even have users who are those virtual machines could be currently being used by somebody in the migration can happen from one server to the other and it most a user might notice a little hourglass appear over the screen or a little spinny icon meaning the hourglass for a couple of seconds, but then it would pick right back up where they left off and they wouldn’t even realize that things had been migrated.

So, live Migration is a great feature, came out a few years ago and you can basically have virtual machines that are being migrated from one Hyper-V server to that. Essentially what it does is it does a replication where it replicates the virtual machines over to the other server. Both of them are up and running and it’s synchronizing them live while they’re being used and then it just shuts down one and switches the person over to the other. So, it’s a live migration now. Probably the oldest method that’s ever been around is just the export import wizard. You can right click a virtual machine in Hyper-V and click export and it will basically allow you to export it to another location. And then when you get to the other Hyper-V server, you just run the import wizard inside Hyper-V manager and you can import it. Another option is to copy Cluster roll Wizard. So, if you are clustering with Hyper-V, you already got a copy of the exact same virtual machine over on the hard drive because you’ve got to failover scenario. So, if one Hyper-V server fails, the other kicks in, right? Well then you’re already in sync.

So, you can, you can just have a failover occur and have that Hyper-V server take over. And then of course there’s Hyper-V Replicas, which is really what, what the, the live migration and all of that stuff is doing is doing a replica. But Hyper-V replica is something you can initiate where it replicates a version of your server, sorry, it replicates a version of your virtual machines and hard drives over to another, another machine. And so you could have them replicated over and then you could shut one down. Now, that’s a little different than a live migration in that if a user is using it currently and you disable, you stop one server, it’s going to the person is going to get disconnected. So, ultimately the two that are probably the best solution is the live migration solution or the cluster solution. The lot of migration solution though, is a whole lot easier than having to set up a cluster. So, you do have the benefit of not having to deal with that.

Now, what about remote desktop services? So, that’s our DSS, right? So, that’s Microsoft’s ability to let users remote into and use a server as though they’re physically sitting there so you can migrate remote desktop services from one server to another. You can do it as early as Server 2012 R2 very easily using the server migration tools. You can migrate all of those settings and services over remote applications, all of that.

Now, I do tell you here that there is no in there’s no direct in-place migration for all servers, for all RDP services. Instead, what happens is your components get can be moved over and then you can do an upgrade if you needed to from one place. From one server type to the other server type, you can move data licenses.

So, ultimately what they’re saying there is not just like a single trigger for all of it. You are when you run the migration tools, there’s individual components that get migrated separately. There is a direct migration for the web component, the RD gateway component and the licensing services. When it comes to this, but the rest of the services like Virtual Machine Host and things like that, if you’re doing that in a remote desktop that’s got to be migrated separately, you can use the migration tools for that. The server migration tools, DHCP. DHCP is pretty easy to migrate. You stop the DHCP service on the source and destination so you have to have DHCP installed on the destination server as well. And then you’re going to stop both services. You’ll open up the migration tools in the Server Manager on the source DHCP server, run the x port because it’s basically going to pull you into PowerShell, you’re going to run export the TSS MiG server setting-feature ID, DHCP command. You’re basically saying, Hey, I want to export DHCP, it’ll generate a file, SVR, MiG, MiG, and then you’ll, you’ll copy that over to the destination server. And then on the destination server you’re going to run the import -s MiG server settings, dash, feature ID, DHCP command, and then start the service up. And there you go. Your DHCP service has been migrated so it’s very easy to migrate the DHCP service. You can do it. There’s a, there’s an old way to do it too using the net SSH command.

So, if you’ve ever used, if you’re an old school admin you ever had to migrate DHCP, you might be familiar with the net SSH command being able to do this because you still can use that command is still available. And then print migration. Print migration is probably the easiest of all the migrations I’ve listed so far. Even easier than DHCP. You open up the print management tool on a source server. You’ll right click the print management tool name on the screen and you’ll click migrate printers. And then there’s a little wizard that pops up called the Export Wizard and it’ll let you export to a file called Export Print Export file.

So, we’ll have a print export extension. And then on the destination server, you’ll open up print management, you’ll right click and you’ll click the migrate print again, except this time you’ll choose import and you’ll import that file that you export. And that’s going to pull all of your settings over. It can pull drivers, all of that stuff can be can be migrated very easy. All right.

So, hopefully that gives you an idea.

Now, the different types of migrations and different the steps you’d follow. You’re going to find that migrating over to serve to different, different roles and stuff that services over to this server is relatively easy. You don’t. You install the migration tools. The only one that really you have to kind of go outside of would be web deploy. That’s a different thing you have to download for is, but all of these other services, you’re just going to migrate using the Windows Server migration tools that are built in.

94. Installing the Windows Server Migration tool

Let’s walk through the process now of installing the Windows Server migration tools. First off, to do that, all I got to do is open up Server Manager. I’m going to go to manage add roles and features. Next, next, next. And we’ll go to the features area. We’re going to scroll down to the bottom here and you will see the Windows Server migration tool. So, we’ll just turn that on. We’ll click Next and we’re going to click Install.

Now, as far as ISE goes, if you open up Google, just do a search for download Web deploy is you’ll see there’s a link right there you can click on. And from there. You can download the latest version of Web, deploy a little download link right here, and this is going to help you basically walk you through if you need to migrate and is Web server. All right. Backing up everything, moving it over and importing it and just builds basically just builds a package which just kind of automates everything for you. All right.

So, as you can see, very straightforward to get to get that going and just waiting on this to finish installing. I’m just going to close out of that. And then if I go over here tools and scroll down. You’ll see we have the very bottom, the Windows Server migration tool. So, we’ll open that up. You’ll notice that it’s just going to pull us into PowerShell.

Now, we have a Command X port dash. Smeg Server settings. Smeg Server Settings Server Migration Server settings. Right. And if we go out here to Google and we do a search for X Port-Smeg server settings, there is the article right there.

So, if you need to perform migration, it’s important to always and I always like to say this when I’m talking about PowerShell, it’s very important to pull up the article about how to use the command. There’s lots and lots of information out there on how you can use these different commands if you just take a look for it and they walk you through how to do it right. Like one example is they’re doing here is backing up DHCP. You’re exporting DHCP here. All right. But this document is going to explain utilizing their migration tool for migrating different features that are available. You’re like, okay, well, what features do I have? What what services do I have? So on a, on a window server, if you do this right here, get-command you say-now and we’ll say Star feature star. Oops, didn’t mean to put an eight there. You can see that there is if we look just here it is get Windows feature right if you type git-windows feature. You can look up the feature name. Of what it might be that you’re wanting to migrate, right? So here are all the various features that are available on server. Okay. Just kind of scroll through those lots and lots and lots of different features here. See, DHCP is the name of the drive. There’s DNS. So, if you knew the feature name, you just specify the feature ID, write this feature ID and you can migrate. All right. So, very-very straightforward.

Now, as far as printers go, there is a print management tool, right? But there’s catch to that. You’d obviously have to be using this as a print server. Right. Which I’m not at the moment.

So, you actually have to have let’s just go here real quick. And there it is, print and document services. If I was using this as a print server, I would obviously already have this print document services installed on the machine. Right. And I’ll go ahead and let that install. All right.

Now, that’s done. So, let’s say we were using this as print server, right? So, we can go here tools. And there’s a tool called print management. I can pull that up. All right? And I can I can go right here and just right click here where it says print management, click migration, migrate printers. And this is where I can export, right? So I could export this server or I could say print server over the network, right.

So, I’d specify the other the other printer across the network, although it’s just going to generate a file and that file could be imported. Right.

So, if I just call this, we’ll call it in y c dash. DC1 and we’ll hit save. It’s going to export the print settings to that file. And then all you’ve got to do is go to the other server and then run the same wizard and you can just import that file, right? So if we go over here and look, I just saved it to my desktop and the extension of that file, as you can see, is a printer export. All right. So, then it can just be it can be imported and you literally can just double click it. And it’s going to generate the import wizard. So, as you can see migrating, all of that is not all that difficult.

Now, as far as remote desktop services go, you have remote desktop, you can use the migration for that, you can use the server migration console for that, which is basically PowerShell right here. And you’ve got here it is right here, you have to go individual so when you run this command. All it is just specify the feature and you have to do each one individually. All right. And that’s as far as migrating server. That’s how you would do it. Ultimately, though, I think you’re going to find migrating services is not as difficult as you would think. And really, the only one that there’s two that are that you don’t use that tool for, you don’t do it for printer management and you don’t do it for ISE. You use the web double deploy tool, which just zips everything up for you to do my IIS. But ultimately migrating servers is I think you’re going to find relatively straightforward.