In Place Upgrade Windows 2016 to Windows 2019
KB ID 0001761 Problem For the last twenty years or so I’ve said “In place upgrades are a bad idea”, my rationale has been that if something is broken we are simply migrating that problem, and we are relying on a lot of factors, (some of which may be unknown.) That we will just have to ‘trust that it will work’. Most modern servers are virtual so we can snapshot them, or clone them and test the upgrade...
Remote Desktop Services: RDS Sizing Calculations
KB ID 0001753 Problem This is a horrible subject to find any decent information on. Microsoft are typically ‘vague’ and most people are stuck with using trial and error, or massively overestimating hardware to be on the safe side. I get asked this occasionally and, just like Microsoft, it’s a question I don’t like to answer! People are reticent to tell you that you need ‘x’ amount of CPU and...
Enable Remote Desktop (Remotely)
KB ID 0001747 Problem Let’s say you want to RDP to a remote server (imagine such a thing!) But some doofus didn’t enable RDP? Well you can enable Remote Desktop via group policy and wait a while. I used to connect to the registry remotely and change the key that enabled RDP, but now you can do it with a simple PowerShell command. Not only will it enable Remote Desktop, it will also allow RDP on the Windows firewall (if...
Windows File Server Migration (Maintain Share & NTFS Permissions)
KB ID 0001201 Problem When attempting a File Server Migration why isn’t this better publicised? Did you know Microsoft have a set of Migration tools, and one of them is for file servers? Now traditionally I’d use RoboCopy or XCopy to migrate files and folders, and for ‘User Profiles’ I would normally back them up, and restore them to the new server. This is because the file permissions on ‘correctly...
Domain Join SID Error
KB ID 0001732 Problem Thankfully I don’t see a SID error very often these days; The following error occurred when attempting to join the domain ‘{domain-name} The domain join cannot be completed because the SID of the domain you attempted to join was identical to the SID of this machine. This is a symptom of an improperly cloned operating system install. You should run Sysprep on this machine in order to generate a new...
Migrate From Server 2012 to Server 2019 Domain Controllers
KB ID 0001731 Problem I get asked about this quite a lot. In the past most of the queries were about moving from Server 2008 to Server 2019, if that’s what you are after then simply go here. This article is purely for the introduction of, and migration to Windows Server 2019 Domain Controllers. And it assumes your current domain controllers are Windows server 2012 (or 2012 R2). Adding a Server 2019 Domain Controller Once you...