Windows Server 2012 R2 Upgrade question

T

The Cobra

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Jun 19, 2003
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Hi Folks,

Amid all the Windows 10 install stuff, I have a question about a 2012 R2 server install. Over the last few months, I have retired all of our 2003/R2 servers up to 2008 R2 and 2012 R2. 5 of our DC's are sitting at 2012/R2 with the final DC sitting at 2008/R2. Yesterday I burned a DVD to do an in-place upgrade of the last server (I was gonna put in the disk and do the upgrade from home via VPN. Well, I went out for drinks yesterday afternoon and forgot to put in the DVD into the 2008/R2 box so that I could perform the upgrade today after the machine had it's full backup.

My question: Is there a way to do an upgrade from 2008/R2 to 2012/R2 without a thumb drive or a DVD with the physical media? I really don't feel like driving into my school today because of Seafair happening today downtown and it is going to be swamped and I don't want to deal with all that crap.

Thank you.
 
Does your server have any type of iDRAC/IPMI/etc.management access? You can typically mount an ISO that way for an upgrade.
 
It's probably way too late in the day to tackle this now, but in situations like this I use 7-zip. You can copy 7-zip to a server remotely and it will work without an install. You then extract the contents of the ISO to a folder and run setup from there.

If you can't use it this time, it is at least something to add to your bag of tricks. I'm a system engineer and I work with servers that are all over the country, so I very rarely have the option of physically mounting a disc or flash drive. So I use this alllll the time.
 
After he gets his last server upgraded he won't need that trick (since you can mount ISOs without 3rd party tools in 2012 R2). ;)

Definitely a useful thing to keep handy though.
 
Oh yes, I love that feature of 2012 R2. It was a feature introduced with server 2012 in fact, although I very rarely see server 2012. Most enterprises are going / have gone from 2003/8 R2 to 2012 R2.

Now what I don't like about 2012 R2 is what a PITA it can be to add the .net framework 3.5 feature, which many applications, including SQL Server, require. You have to mount the 2012 R2 ISO or provide some other alternate source to add the feature in most situations (assuming the server isn't using regular windows updates). It sucks. I have a 300mb zip file that includes the Media\SxS folder off the 2012 R2 installation disc, and I copy that to servers when I need to add the feature. Why in the world it is not copied by default to the Windows folder at time of installation is beyond me. I mean really, is 300mb that big a deal?
 
I figured it was added in non-R2, but yeah, it's pretty rare to see non-R2.

And I remember that .net issue when I was starting to play around with Hyper-V / VMM. You could probably make some scripts to put on a custom install disk that would automatically copy those files to the server during the first boot, and as I just found out yes:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Hh825167.aspx
 
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