We have been stuck at 2003 for some time we found during the discovery phase of the upgrade process because the vendor of our Contact Centers' application suite won't support the version we are running on anything else. That is finally getting upgraded so our AD 2008 migration plan is being resurrected. Same vendor will not support version we are upgrading to on 2012 so once again we are stuck. This vendor is well known as a hardware vendor who got into the software business through acquisition and is famous for a support matrix of 1 entry per version of their products, at the Windows Service Pack level no less.
Ran into a similar situation on the opposite end of the spectrum where another ReallyBig(tm) HW vendor refused to support an implementation of some of its software because we were still on 2003. They only supported 2008R2 and insisted we have a dedicated SE to cover our "unsupported" configuration because AD groups "behaved differently in different versions of Windows" I still haven't gotten all the coffee off my monitor from that conf call. Moral of the story is to do an inventory of critical enterprise apps and make sure you don't get into an untenable situation. I really don't doubt that any one of the 3 versions of AD could support any of these apps but when a large vendor waves the unsupported flag there can be a pretty hard stop from management. Ironically, Windows support sunset often comes into play when you get in these situations and becomes one of the drivers. From: Christopher Bodnar [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2013 1:34 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Domain upgrade: 2008 R2 or 2012 ? Has anyone done this evaluation recently? We are a 2003 R2 shop. We were in the process of planning a migration to a 2008 R2 domain last year (hardware was bought and deployed), when the funds got cut. From what I hear, we will have funding and approval this year for the project. So the question is now, 2008 R2 or 2012. I've had very little time with 2012 so far. Hopefully that will change in the near future. The benefits of going from 2003 to 2008 R2 i've already captured. From what I've seen so far, 2012 seems stable and an incremental upgrade for our environment. Some of the things that might push me towards 2012 don't apply in our environment. for Example RDS and Hyper-V. We are a big Citrix and VMWare shop. So I don't really see us making use of those specific features, or the enhancements in them from previous versions. From my understanding 2012 is included in our EA agreement. So I don't think it will really be a licensing issue. Love to hear thoughts and comments from others who are going through this right now, or have done this evaluation recently. Thanks, Christopher Bodnar Enterprise Architect I, Corporate Office of Technology:Enterprise Architecture and Engineering Services Tel 610-807-6459 3900 Burgess Place, Bethlehem, PA 18017 [email protected]<mailto:> [cid:[email protected]] The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America www.guardianlife.com<http://www.guardianlife.com/> ----------------------------------------- This message, and any attachments to it, may contain information that is privileged, confidential, and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, copying, or communication of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail and delete the message and any attachments. Thank you. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin PG&E is committed to protecting our customers' privacy. To learn more, please visit http://www.pge.com/about/company/privacy/customer/ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
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