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Wirth'sLaw
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2010
- Messages
- 177
Hey All - I wrote 3 weeks ago about my Win 8 experience, so I thought I'd share my experience moving my two 2008 R2 test lab boxes to 2012 and my thoughts about this new OS.
First of all I always value the quality in the Server product line. Like any OS keep it simple stupid is the key to success. Dont get me wrong, each has deficiencies, but you can usually bet the next OS will fill in the gaps.
My 2008 R2 lab was a 2 Standard hosts both with AD and DNS. I decided to take a different route than I could have instead of transferring the roles, reinstalling one with 2012, transferring the roles back, and then installing the second 2012, I decided to bring up a fresh 2012 VM (in ESX), give it the roles, and then install both 2012s at the same time.
The Modern UI works as well as it does on 8 its better initially because they dont clutter the screen with apps. Like I said in my Win 8 experience thread, the simpler the initial Modern UI screen is the more manageable the interface is. Try to use All Apps on 8/2012 it can be a cluster fuck.
True Failover DHCP servers is a nice perk. How many times have you seen 2 servers with split scopes and half of the scopes excluded? Yep, no more of that craziness. I tested this in a lab scenario as well. I had a Win 8 client with an IP assigned from Server1, so I took 1 offline, refreshed the client IP and Server2 showed the IP assignment instead. How many times will DHCP go offline and then a client happen to go for an IP? Its not common on SMBs, but having a failover is a winner nonetheless. This also works for superscopes and any amount of subnets you may be giving out IPs on.
Installing AD is definitely different as the good old dcpromo command is no more. The new process is longer than the old you have to install ADDS and then promote to a DC. In the end it works the same and I think the actual promotion itself is faster on 2012.
Hyper-V looks a lot like 2008 R2s, but it has the addition of the VHDX extension for all of you wanting to use 2894284294 exabyte virtual disks and similar amounts of memory. The ability to failover state, memory, and virtual disks with shared-nothing storage is a huge perk. This also requires some extra planning - you to be sure you have more than enough disk, memory, and proc to deal with a migration. In my case my boxes are different enough that Id have to take a strong look at which VMs would migrate successfully given the requirements of the VMs on the original machine.
ReFS is a good idea, but I am interested to see how many file system issues it actually clears without the system being down.
Enough for now!
First of all I always value the quality in the Server product line. Like any OS keep it simple stupid is the key to success. Dont get me wrong, each has deficiencies, but you can usually bet the next OS will fill in the gaps.
My 2008 R2 lab was a 2 Standard hosts both with AD and DNS. I decided to take a different route than I could have instead of transferring the roles, reinstalling one with 2012, transferring the roles back, and then installing the second 2012, I decided to bring up a fresh 2012 VM (in ESX), give it the roles, and then install both 2012s at the same time.
The Modern UI works as well as it does on 8 its better initially because they dont clutter the screen with apps. Like I said in my Win 8 experience thread, the simpler the initial Modern UI screen is the more manageable the interface is. Try to use All Apps on 8/2012 it can be a cluster fuck.
True Failover DHCP servers is a nice perk. How many times have you seen 2 servers with split scopes and half of the scopes excluded? Yep, no more of that craziness. I tested this in a lab scenario as well. I had a Win 8 client with an IP assigned from Server1, so I took 1 offline, refreshed the client IP and Server2 showed the IP assignment instead. How many times will DHCP go offline and then a client happen to go for an IP? Its not common on SMBs, but having a failover is a winner nonetheless. This also works for superscopes and any amount of subnets you may be giving out IPs on.
Installing AD is definitely different as the good old dcpromo command is no more. The new process is longer than the old you have to install ADDS and then promote to a DC. In the end it works the same and I think the actual promotion itself is faster on 2012.
Hyper-V looks a lot like 2008 R2s, but it has the addition of the VHDX extension for all of you wanting to use 2894284294 exabyte virtual disks and similar amounts of memory. The ability to failover state, memory, and virtual disks with shared-nothing storage is a huge perk. This also requires some extra planning - you to be sure you have more than enough disk, memory, and proc to deal with a migration. In my case my boxes are different enough that Id have to take a strong look at which VMs would migrate successfully given the requirements of the VMs on the original machine.
ReFS is a good idea, but I am interested to see how many file system issues it actually clears without the system being down.
Enough for now!