Hi All,
I am currently taking over IT Admin duties for a new client, and will be downscaling their bloated 20 server environment to a 5 server Hyper-V environment (about 4 VMs per server). It will be a complicated, and rather time consuming/time sensitive process, given that as soon as I am handed the Admin passwords, I am expected to transition the entire network to a new DC server VM, a seperate Exchange VM, and seperate DirectAccess VM over a 3 day weekend.
I was thinking about getting started on this early, and was planning on setting up and configuring the DC and Exchange Server VMs on an old spare Dell server I have with my licensed copy of Server Standard 2012 R2 with Hyper V role enabled. Then, when it comes time to transition them over the 3 day weekend, it would be a simple matter of copying the HYPER-V Folder (containing Virtual Hard Disks & Virtual Machines folders) from the spare Dell Server to a portable USB drive that will be brought to client's site. Then at client's site, I would erase and install Server Standard 2012 R2 Hyper V on one of the client's 20 servers (probably the best of the bunch), and then copy the HYPER-V folder containing the DC & Exchange server from the portable USB drive to it. Then I would simply import the DC and Exchange VMs via the Hyper V Manager.
My two questions are as follows:
1) Just to be sure, given the DC and Exchange VMs are virtualized, it will make no difference to transitioning from an old crappy Dell server to a rather new modern Dell server. I know performance will be better on the new server, but there will be no complications with the VM migration (aside from allocating more Cores, Memory, & Virtual NIC)...yes?
2) The client's Windows Server licenses - client is currently under an Enterprise Subscription license with Microsoft (either Open Value or Open Business - dont know yet). For the time being (before the 3 day transition), can I get away with using a 180 day trial editions of Server Standard 2012 R2 and Exchange 2013 to setup and configure the VMs, and then activate the trial editions later using their existing Enterprise Keys? Or will this not work because of some incompatible reason? There are over 200 users and 300 email accounts, so I would really prefer to configure all this ahead of time if I can, but dont want to find out last minute or on day of migration that my Enterprise Key wont activate because I used the trial editions and I have to reinstall/reconfigure all over again. Is this possible or is there another, better, recommended way?
Ultimately, I would like to get as much done ahead of time, so that then the major issues on migration day will be data migration (files, folders, and email) and the reinstallation of all 100 workstations (via Windows Deployment Services - yeeah baby!!!).
Does this sound possible? Any advise would be greatly appreciated.
