Free SharePoint?
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@Carnival-Boy said in Free SharePoint?:
I'm not recommending it. Depends on the OP's circumstances. But you could probably get the whole thing, installed, migrated and live in a couple of hours (he says, having never actually done it). Sure, there's a massive element of kicking the can down the road by sticking with free Sharepoint, but sometimes kicking the can down the road is a good idea. Only sometimes though!
Getting the services installed is much different than it being ready for production. Even if you moved fast as hell on it, 3 months would be hard to achieve to get something like this in any actually useful production.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Free SharePoint?:
I'm not recommending it. Depends on the OP's circumstances. But you could probably get the whole thing, installed, migrated and live in a couple of hours (he says, having never actually done it). Sure, there's a massive element of kicking the can down the road by sticking with free Sharepoint, but sometimes kicking the can down the road is a good idea. Only sometimes though!
I mostly agree. Although in this case, the decision to kick that down the road in this way had the most value in 2013 and has diminished since then with it falling off a cliff in a few months. Totally basing current decisions on the past three years is a little like sunk cost thinking, but something made 2013 not useful until now - what would make it suddenly so valuable to change that decision at a time when the general value is plummeting.
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@IRJ said in Free SharePoint?:
@Carnival-Boy said in Free SharePoint?:
I'm not recommending it. Depends on the OP's circumstances. But you could probably get the whole thing, installed, migrated and live in a couple of hours (he says, having never actually done it). Sure, there's a massive element of kicking the can down the road by sticking with free Sharepoint, but sometimes kicking the can down the road is a good idea. Only sometimes though!
Getting the services installed is much different than it being ready for production. Even if you moved fast as hell on it, 3 months would be hard to achieve to get something like this in any actually useful production.
True. That's very fast.
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I've been thinking a lot about this and have an idea:
We've been using this server for the last 5 years without any support, and without any on-site staff who know how to manage it (other than the daily backups I do). So I'm considering two options:- Perform a P2V of the server and host it in our existing VMware environment.
- Build a new virtual member server in our existing VMware environment and migrate the data from the existing WSS 3.0 server to the new VM (using the same versions of everything; Server 2008 R2, WSS 3.0 and SQL Server 2008).
I'd prefer to go with option 1, but I've never virtualized a DC, so I'd like to hear some feedback on what you guys think of this and if there are any specifics I need to be aware of when virtualizing the existing DC.
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@Shuey said in Free SharePoint?:
I've been thinking a lot about this and have an idea:
We've been using this server for the last 5 years without any support, and without any on-site staff who know how to manage it (other than the daily backups I do). So I'm considering two options:- Perform a P2V of the server and host it in our existing VMware environment.
- Build a new virtual member server in our existing VMware environment and migrate the data from the existing WSS 3.0 server to the new VM (using the same versions of everything; Server 2008 R2, WSS 3.0 and SQL Server 2008).
I'd prefer to go with option 1, but I've never virtualized a DC, so I'd like to hear some feedback on what you guys think of this and if there are any specifics I need to be aware of when virtualizing the existing DC.
Virtualize is always highly recommended.
The VMware P2V converter is kind of clunky but it works. You will have to put a client on the machine that you want to virtualize, make a few settings, tell it where you want it to go, and press start. Typically you want to shutdown the old one after it is done converting if you start up the virtual after completion.
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@NerdyDad Cool, I've already done a successful V2V of another server months ago and it was pretty slick (as well as some P2Vs of other servers). I've never run into any problems and can see this as being a good way to go.
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@Shuey said in Free SharePoint?:
I'd prefer to go with option 1, but I've never virtualized a DC
Do it offline, not hot. That's about the only major thing to know about P2V of DCs.
Really though, you might want to rethink the plans here. First off, it's trivially easy to deploy a new DC, so why keep around an ancient install when you can clean up your environment. Second, you are running "critical" services on the same box as your DC, not to mention you have SQL Server installed on it as well. That is strictly verboten by Microsoft. Dumb is dumb. Now is the time to fix it all up.
What are you running in Sharepoint? Flat repository? Full workflow? Customized templates? This is what makes the determination of where you need to go with it. Most of the people I've seen with this kind of setup are using it as a glorified file system with a minor amount of workflow in it. Would take me about an hour to migrate it to even the newest version or 365.
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@PSX_Defector I've never done a cold P2V :-/... do you have any extra info on how to do this?
I have no need to deploy a new DC; I already have another one in this same ADSS site. I totally realize the way it's currently setup is seriously jacked up, so I'd be happy to get it all fixed up.
The two major road-blocks to getting this accomplished are:
- Upper management doesn't want to spend what it would cost to either get us out to the cloud (via O365)
- We don't have anyone on our team with the necessary skills to do the migration, so we'd have to pay someone to do it for us (and it would have to be migrated to the same version to keep the cost as low as possible).
One of the possible benefits to do the P2V is that, if we ever run into an issue where the virtual server takes a dump and it can't be restored, upper management would likely be forced to pay for a more modern replacement.
I'm not sure how our current SharePoint is setup or used :-/... I didn't setup and I don't manage it.
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I missed the point of the DC. I would just decom the DC, then P2V the rest of the host. If you need a secondary DC then just spun up another VM and dcpromo it.
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@NerdyDad The problem with this option (which has prevented me from doing that all along) is the fact that this server was promoted to a DC and then had SharePoint installed. If we demote the DC, SharePoint will stop working :(.
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@Shuey said in Free SharePoint?:
@NerdyDad The problem with this option (which has prevented me from doing that all along) is the fact that this server was promoted to a DC and then had SharePoint installed. If we demote the DC, SharePoint will stop working :(.
Might need to ask the SharePoint admin what DC it is looking at, but I don't think it is going to matter. As long as the SP server is in the same domain as a DC, it should pull the information that it needs. I'd check DNS records to see if it can access another DC.
Disclaimer: I haven't touched SharePoint 2013 since probably 2013. So I do not recall how that works with user objects, files objects, and permissions.
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@NerdyDad said in Free SharePoint?:
@Shuey said in Free SharePoint?:
@NerdyDad The problem with this option (which has prevented me from doing that all along) is the fact that this server was promoted to a DC and then had SharePoint installed. If we demote the DC, SharePoint will stop working :(.
Might need to ask the SharePoint admin what DC it is looking at, but I don't think it is going to matter. As long as the SP server is in the same domain as a DC, it should pull the information that it needs. I'd check DNS records to see if it can access another DC.
Disclaimer: I haven't touched SharePoint 2013 since probably 2013. So I do not recall how that works with user objects, files objects, and permissions.
If you promote an Exchange server to a DC, you cannot demote it. This is likely something similar.
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@JaredBusch @NerdyDad Jared is absolutely right. This is the scenario I read about in multiple posts online (including a separate thread on Mangolassi). Because SharePoint (WSS 3.0) was installed on a DC, demoting the DC would break the SharePoint functionality :(.
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Well that sucks.
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@NerdyDad said in Free SharePoint?:
I missed the point of the DC. I would just decom the DC, then P2V the rest of the host. If you need a secondary DC then just spun up another VM and dcpromo it.
Which is why it is verboten to use SQL Server in an Active Directory Domain Controller. You demote it, you break everything.
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@PSX_Defector Right, and I've already stated that this was all built and deployed by the jackasses that ran IT way before I started working here! I hate it more than anyone :D.
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@Shuey said in Free SharePoint?:
The two major road-blocks to getting this accomplished are:
- Upper management doesn't want to spend what it would cost to either get us out to the cloud (via O365)
- We don't have anyone on our team with the necessary skills to do the migration, so we'd have to pay someone to do it for us (and it would have to be migrated to the same version to keep the cost as low as possible).
IOW, they see no value in the Sharepoint instance and are fucking morons who think everyone should work for free.
This isn't a debate, they WILL pay someone somewhere to do this. No one, outside of maybe me, has any experience with WSS 3.0 nowadays. Real Sharepoint developers never used it, admins would just not bother with it. And no one worth their salt is gonna install a 10 year old depreciated service anyways. Your only option is to migrate the data to 365 on the cheap end. Full Sharepoint 2016 instances get pricey fast, not to mention the need for a SQL install. And if you want it to have better reliability, two in the farm plus a redundant SQL instance.
If you don't know what's on it, find out. Because it can be just as easy as copy/paste files over from the old site to 365. If it's got templates that no longer work in 2013, then you will need to know that before hand and fix them up post migration.
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Every aspect here sounds more like management not valuing IT. Nothing else you can really do here except to break out the resume before something does happen. Otherwise, you're going to be the scapegoat.
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@Shuey said in Free SharePoint?:
- Perform a P2V of the server and host it in our existing VMware environment.
- Build a new virtual member server in our existing VMware environment and migrate the data from the existing WSS 3.0 server to the new VM (using the same versions of everything; Server 2008 R2, WSS 3.0 and SQL Server 2008).
Option 2 might be easier than you think. Use the "Backup and Restore" feature in the Sharepoint Central Administration. As others have said, you don't want Sharepoint running on a DC, so this would be a good opportunity to fix that issue. It's probably the easiest and cheapest solution.
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@Carnival-Boy Cool, I'll look into that.
If I was going to try a P2V of this server, what would be the best way to go about it?
- I could consider a cold clone (the only disc I have available to try this is the VMware cold clone 3.0.3 disc; not sure if that will work or not)
- Another option I was considering is installing VMware Standalone Converter, then booting into DSRM mode and performing the P2V. Once the server was successfully converted, I'd shutdown the existing server, fire up the virtual, and make sure the IP was the same.
Thoughts on these options, or other possibilities?
