VirtaMove can help with Microsoft IIS and SQL migration. Both Microsoft IIS and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and above are excellent candidates for migration using VirtaMove. Getting off to a good start is important when facing the daunting challenge of eliminating hundreds or thousands of Windows 2003 servers from the enterprise’s application portfolio. One way to accelerate migrations is to identify common application stacks and align them to repeatable Use Cases that VirtaMove can migrate quickly.
With the Microsoft IIS use case, one of the major benefits of leveraging VirtaMove is the ability to not only migrate Web Sites, Application Pools, and .NET Frameworks, but also the ability to perform an in-place upgrade to a newer version of IIS in the same migration maneuver. VirtaMove has the ability to upgrade IIS 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 7.5, and 8.0 to 8.5 which is the latest version running on Windows 2012R2. This agility allows dramatic time savings when migrating IIS and .NET based applications. VirtaMove accomplishes this by gathering the list of features enabled on the source OS and enabling the like-for-like features on the new destination server. Backwards compatibility components are also enabled to lessen the amount of post migration remediation and avoid having to recompile applications. To the migration specialist performing the migration, the steps are similar to any migration whereby applications are selected, including Web Server (IIS) as in-scope for the migration. IIS-specific user accounts and groups are included for migration and unlike most migrations, the source server’s IIS services do not require a stoppage to complete the process. The result is applications migrated to Windows 2012R2, rehosted to align with the new computer name, 32-bit applications repointed to leverage WOW64 (Windows on Windows 64bit) and functioning web applications in less time than a manual migration of equal scope.
Microsoft SQL 2005 and above is also a great migration candidate for use with VirtaMove. (Microsoft SQL 2000 is left off the list as this version requires a multi-hop upgrade to get to a supported configuration. SQL 2000 must be upgraded to SQL 2005 and then onto a newer version for support on Windows 2008R2 and Windows 2012R2.) For Microsoft SQL 2005, VirtaMove recommends a migration with dissolve and then an in-place upgrade to a newer version of SQL. The reason for this is SQL 2005 SP4 is going end of extended support April 12, 2016, so it makes sense to move to a newer version with a longer application lifecycle or support date during the migration. During the migration, all SQL components are selected for migration, services stopped on the source machine to remove file locks, and the SQL services then started within the VirtaMove migration container. You validate that MSSQL is functional by launching components like SQL Server Management Studio, ensuring that all in-scope databases are present and online. Once this has been confirmed, SQL Server can be dissolved into the destination operating system. If an in-place upgrade is required, mount the SQL version media and proceed with the upgrade. Note that the SQL Server installer requires that the bitness remain the same as the bitness of the source SQL version. If the source SQL Server bitness was 32-bit, the in-place upgrade must also be 32-bit. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 ships with 32-bit support. The advantage of leveraging VirtaMove for SQL migrations is the fact that VirtaMove will bring across all SQL elements in one migration process, including: Database Engine, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, Notification Services, Integration Services, Replication, and Management Tools. Migration does not require any remediation that would be normally associated with a manual SQL migration.
In both these use case examples, VirtaMove is able to dramatically reduce the amount of time required for the migrations, while providing Operating Systems uplift, rehosting applications to the new server name, repointing the application artifacts (both file and registry level) to WOW64, and creating a virtualized application container that can be reused to additional destination servers.
Finding additional common application frameworks and proving compatibility/viability is a faster way to churn through the application portfolio and get quick wins established for a migration program. Click here for a partial list of applications that have been successfully migrated from Windows 2003 to Windows 2012 using VirtaMove.