This week sees the start of a migration process. As a new business venture launches a consolidation of services is required and for this reason I am migrating from a venerable and stable SBS 2003 environment to an SBS 2011 standard install to gain the latest features and also to centralise a number of functions that have become seperated over time on other servers and virtual machines. I hope to use this as a case study for a number of clients who will require this migration in the New Year and to kick the tyres on the migration process. Having been through many migrations it is comforting to see that a lot more work and attention has gone into the migration than was previously available.
SBS 2011 provides a lot of functionality for small businesses but it is important to properly exploit it. Just trying to use functionality because its there can often distract clients from whats important during a migration. You need to maintain fidelity and keep service levels and availability high during any change like this. I’m sure this process will spawn more articles as SBS 2011 does introduce a number of features (and changes) that some may find hard to penetrate.