Lately, it seems that you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some sort of article about the End of Support for Windows Server 2003.
It's not like the 7 to 8 million instances of Server 2003 still out there will suddenly freeze up on July 15, 2015. But running your enterprise on unsupported servers (no hot fixes, no security patches, no nothing) is a scary proposition.
The official End of Support date is July 14. That's 160 days away. And 'though your mileage may vary, 210 days is a commonly cited amount of time for doing a server migration. If you happen to be in possession of some of those 7 or 8 million Server 2003 instances, the math isn't terribly comforting.
That said, there's no need to throw up your hands in despair - there are a number of steps one can take to accelerate Server 2003 migrations.
The server migration process consists of a number of critical and labor-intensive steps that chew up a lot of calendar time. Many of these steps involve repetitive or recursive steps involving predictable logic - these steps are ideal candidates for using software automation tools.
Software automation tools such as Dell's ChangeBASE and Asset Manager can crank through laborious (but critical) phases such as "discovery" in short order.
| I've recently authored a white paper entitled "160 Days and Counting - Regaining Lost Time". It's pushing 25 pages... and growing - about once a week, I update the document to include additional ways to save even more time, effort and money while migrating away from Windows Server 2003.
This week's addition was a discussion on the discovery phase of server migration - why it's critical, why it's difficult, and how software automation tools can help you complete your migrations before the July 14 deadline. If reading a long white paper doesn't sound like your idea of fun, you can always:
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Hollis Tibbetts, or @SoftwareHollis as he is known by his 100,000+ followers on Social Media, is by day Evangelist & Software Technology Director at Quest.
By night and weekends he is a commentator, speaker and all-round communicator about Software, Data and Cloud in their myriad aspects.
