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Five Things You Need to Know AboutMigrating from Windows Server 2003
An Executive Brief Sponsored by HP and Microsoft
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Do you have your arms around your Windows Server 2003 migration?
Sure, your team has probably headed up countless maintenance initiatives in the past – upgrades, refreshes, migrations. But if you make the mistake of thinking your Windows Server 2003 migration is more of the same, you will lose on two fronts. First, you will underestimate the complexity of the effort, thus increasing the chance of failure by overrunning timeline and budget. More importantly, you will miss the opportunity to bring value to your business. This paper introduces five considerations that will change your perspective on the Windows Server migration initiative – and spur technical, finance and line of business employees to jump on board.
1. It’s not really about Windows Server 2003.
Remember your first car phone in the early 90s? Or that really cool flip-phone you had a decade ago? As enhanced devices hit the market, you probably did not cling to the old. Instead, you recognised the new technology as a way to increase your productivity, make your life easier and give you access to new ways of interacting with people and businesses.
Migration from Windows Server 2003 offers a similar opportunity for your business to move forward. It’s not just a routine updating of your server operating system – although there is no doubt that Windows Server 2012 R2 offers greater functionality and efficiency than your old system. Instead, the migration can be the catalyst that will allow you to shed your old processes, maximise the value of those decommissioned assets and ensure safe, responsible removal. It can also bring both your IT and finance departments into alignment with your business goals.
Recommendation: Align the migration with your long-term business vision. This can mean getting expert help to build a cohesive plan and explore fresh approaches. You likely have developed a strategic vision for the IT department. Perhaps you are looking to become more agile and responsive to line-of-business colleagues. Perhaps you plan to drive innovation, enabling your company to differentiate in the market. Or perhaps your goal includes a complete transformation of IT roles and processes to an IT-as-a-Service model.
Now, re-visit your tactical “to do” list with an eye to aligning initiatives with the strategic vision. For example, Windows Server 2003 migration will require “touching” most of your hardware and applications.This provides an ideal opportunity to reconfigure your data centre infrastructure, to expand virtualisation and automation, to modernise your applications and/or to launch a private or hybrid cloud environment. Having a clear view of your IT lifecycle and all your current assets could help ensure that your migration is simple, effective and aligned with your long term business goals. You will realise synergies from different projects if they are linked together through disciplined project management, prioritised based on objective analysis and managed through a facilitated consultative approach.
And don’t forget your end users. Application changes likely will affect how users work within your company. Making technology work better for IT should translate to an improvement in the user experience. To ensure the success of your project, set aside budget and time to train users.
If you continue to think of migrating from Windows Server 2003 as a stand-alone, tactical effort, you may end up like the town that repaves the roads a week before the sewer authority rips them up to replace the pipes: wasting time and money, and incurring the wrath of the inconvenienced townspeople. Instead, by aligning
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your Windows Server 2003 migration with broader goals that directly benefit the entire company, you can potentially save money and time, while gaining support (both budget and cooperation) from the business leadership team.
2. Shortcuts will take longer and cost more than doing it right at the start.
Stretched for budget and technical staff, most IT departments operate in a kind of permanent triage, directing nearly all available resources towards the most severe cases. When you are stressed for time and resources, it’s tempting to migrate the easiest or most obvious cases (hardware that needs upgrading, applications due for a simple refresh) first, with a plan to complete the job someday in the future. The problem is, the workloads that are easy or obvious are not necessarily those that will deliver the greatest return to your company. Furthermore, legacy applications may require more than a simple migration: they may require some recoding to operate on today’s enhanced Windows Server operating systems – which means you need to build enough time into the project to ensure the workload is not jeopardised and to gain the IT investment flexibility to consume technology how and when you need it. Finally, to ensure end user adoption and reduce the risk of productivity loss, you should include training and education as a key component of your post-migration strategy and plan.
Recommendation: Conduct a thorough discovery of your environment, including hardware and software inventory, facilities and skills. If your IT department is like most, this housekeeping function generally suffers from neglect. Now is the time to update your inventory. Be sure to include all infrastructure, application and workload components: not just those that are IT-managed, but also servers, storage and workloads that developers and line-of- business teams may be operating “under the radar”. And remember that the “inventory” should include your IT staff: make sure your IT department has the skills and training to implement and support the new environment.
Discovery can be a time-consuming process if you have a fairly large and undocumented environment. Automated discovery tools such as HP Discovery and Dependence Software can speed up the process. HP experts utilise this software as part of the assessment process in a typical migration project.
Your comprehensive inventory will provide the blueprint for developing your project timeline. You can easily pace your actual migration to a timeline that suits your business; but first you need to know what the entire project looks like at the start. That way, you can provide sufficient time to complete long-timeline tasks (e.g., recoding of critical software), and ensure that migration of dependent workloads is synchronised. In addition, you can accurately assess user impact and schedule appropriate training. You also need to factor in a plan for how you will securely and safely remove decommissioned assets from your premises. This plan should account for the data and environmental laws related to technology disposal, so you can completely wrap up your inventory discovery.
3. Not everything needs to be migrated.
One classic type of project management failure is that it manages very efficiently that which does not need to be done at all. If you send your team on a seek-and-migrate mission in which the only criterion for inclusion in the project is a server with Windows 2003, then you can expect to waste time and money.
The problem is that most businesses accumulate servers, in the data centre and out on the floor. And, according to a 2010 survey conducted by Green Grid, some 10 percent of those are “comatose” – that is, they are running, but unused. 1 Furthermore, the Green Grid survey indicates that 30 percent of IT leaders have never attempted to determine which servers are unused or underutilised.
1 The Green Grid, Unused Server Survey Results Analysis, 2010.
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Recommendation: Create a dialogue with line-of-business users to understand how your servers are being used.
The clean inventory of hardware and software is just the start. Through a combination of IT management tools and user input, you must invest time into understanding not just what is running on your servers, but how much, how and who. Data centre management tools will likely help you identify comatose servers, allowing you to decommission them immediately (saving energy costs as well as avoiding the migration costs and effort). Consider whether certain applications can be virtualised without loss of performance, with multiple virtual machines sharing a physical server. For departmental applications or those with low-usage, engage your line-of-business colleagues to truly understand the business function and value. As software providers enhance their platforms, you may find that a single core application may now offer the same functionality as three or four stand-alone products installed years ago, thus allowing you to decommission certain software products without loss of functionality.
4. Hardware matters, more than you think.
It is certain that you’re expecting a lot more of your server hardware than you were back when Windows 2003 was new. Workloads like analytics and collaboration tools use high levels of processing power. Data centre configurations such as virtualisation and private cloud require sophisticated tuning of multiple platforms (virtualisation, cloud service automation, management and development platforms) to ensure integration across infrastructure environments. Unfortunately, some data centre managers make the mistake of assuming that the enhanced intelligence of today’s platforms and operating systems (including Windows Server 2012 R2) somehow offsets the role of the hardware. Thus, they continue to rely on old or low-cost commodity hardware, even as their workload performance decreases and data centre costs increase.
In fact, even in a “software-defined” world, hardware is an essential component to computing and storage environments. Today’s high-performing hardware is often a workload-optimised, intelligently managed system. Sophisticated infrastructure (servers, storage and networks) is required to support optimal workload performance and efficient data centre operations.
Recommendation: Invest in the right infrastructure.
As you migrate to Windows Server 2012 R2, you need to be sure your server, storage and network infrastructure is prepared to take advantage of the new functionality. Equally important: be sure you are starting to build an infrastructure to support the new style of IT: one that is all about agility, speed, efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Windows Server 2012 R2 helps you along that path, introducing operational and cost-efficiencies through new functionality such as storage spaces, data deduplication and live migration of Hyper-V–based virtual machines.
When it comes time to replace ageing servers and storage, ensure that you select the right architecture, design and components to support your future vision, along with a customised IT investment strategy that fits your business needs. You may want to select a converged, pre-integrated system optimised for specific workloads. Or you can configure standard servers to maximise price-performance. The right infrastructure
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and the right plan for acquiring it, allows you to reduce complexity, simplify management, lower costs and speed delivery of IT services. Build a business case that captures your technology and investment strategies, as well as the total value of the system; including employee productivity gains, increased turnover associated with faster market entry, reductions in operational IT costs associated with hardware maintenance and application deployments and reductions in energy costs. The business case will likely show that investing in the right infrastructure is less costly, in the long run, than choosing a low-performance commodity alternative.
5. You don’t need to go it alone.
Maybe … maybe … your existing team can squeeze in some migration activities along with their day jobs of keeping the business running and adopting new, innovative technology solutions that will keep the company one step ahead of the competition. But for most IT departments, it makes most sense to turn to an outside expert for assistance in planning, investing in and executing a Windows Server migration project and supporting you after the migration. A partner with real-world experience in Windows Server migration, a partner that can quickly provide the expertise you need from a pool of global experts in cloud, application modernisation, business intelligence, mobility, security and data centre solutions. Even more important, a partner with a broad, strategic vision can help you understand how your Windows Server migration can meld into a strategy to transform IT into an agile, responsive, and cost-effective service organisation, supporting the lines of business.
Recommendation: Seek a partner to help you move forward.
The right partner can help you accomplish goals, both tactical (Windows Server 2003 migration) and strategic. Here is what to look for in a partner:
• Technology expertise in Microsoft Windows Server, in server hardware, management software and in key applications and workloads. The partner must be intimately familiar with leading business technology to help you perform integrations, consolidations, IT infrastructure redesign, optimisation and application modernisation, as needed.
• Project management expertise in Windows Server 2003 migrations, data centre transformation and cloud implementation. The partner must be able to scope the project or projects in a way that meets your company’s needs, budget and culture. And the partner must ensure that all projects will be completed on time and budget in a disciplined way, utilising automated delivery, discovery tools, best practices and well-tested methodologies.
• Business consulting expertise to understand and communicate with business leaders across the business. The partner will help you build relationships with the constituents that you will be serving in the future, in an “IT as a Service” model.
• IT investment expertise to help you gain the flexibility, agility, speed and control you need to invest in the Windows Server 2003 migration solution that makes sense for your business. The partner will help you build a customised IT investment strategy to access the technology you need, when and how you need it.
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Time To GeT STarTed
With less than a year before support for Windows Server 2003 is scheduled to end, you know you need to get moving, or place your company’s key workloads at risk.
But, when time, budget and resources are constrained, it can be hard to muster enthusiasm or support for a mundane migration. Instead, consider the migration as a step towards a new way of running the IT department, one that is more responsive to line-of-business needs. When you consider the Windows Server 2003 migration as part of a strategic initiative to transform IT, you can more easily obtain the budget and support you need to make the project a success. Even more important, you will put in place the foundation to help your business meet its goals into the future.
Lynda Stadtmueller Vice President – Cloud Computing Services Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan [email protected]
About Stratecast
Stratecast collaborates with our clients to reach smart business decisions in the rapidly evolving and hyper-competitive Information and Communications Technology markets. Utilising a mix of action-oriented subscription research and customised consulting engagements, Stratecast delivers knowledge and perspective that is only attainable through years of real-world experience in an industry where customers are collaborators; today’s partners are tomorrow’s competitors; and agility and innovation are essential elements for success. Contact your Stratecast Account Executive to engage our experience to assist you in attaining your growth objectives.
For more information, visit www.stratecast.com, dial 877-463-7678, or e-mail [email protected].
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