For my first blog post of 2020, I wanted to share a note about Windows Server 2008 End of Life, and how we’ve been managing the transition.
The upcoming End of Life (EOL) deadline for Windows 2008 Server Operating systems has required businesses worldwide to consider upgrades or replacements to their older company servers.
At the end of this week, we’ll be wrapping up our final server migration for one of our valued MSP customers. If it all goes well, it means that we would have successfully migrated all our impacted customers seamlessly and without disruption ahead of the deadline.
These upgrades can be tricky. Every server environment is different with sometimes unforeseen variables. Without careful preparation, these exercises can be fraught with risk and the potential for downtime and disaster.
For the average user, all they know when they leave office on Friday is that IT will be doing work over the weekend. On Monday morning, everything works fine and they are none the wiser – and this is exactly the way it should be.
Truthfully, the seamlessness of that experience is the culmination of almost a year of careful planning and execution.
When Windows announced the EOL deadline, we would have proactively met with each of our customers to make them aware and to identify the best individual approach to handling the transition.
Internally, there would have been a project management process to review each customer’s environment in detail to ensure that everything was considered prior to the migration. We conducted in-depth planning sessions where we knocked heads (sometimes literally) to determine the best course of action.
So….. when we finally do the actual work, we have a clear plan of action, timelines and milestones (and rollback procedures just in case sh*t hits the fan).
It’s a painstaking process but the end result of being extra thorough is the happy place of a quiet Monday morning.
For our customers, a quiet Monday morning means staff members up and running on their new production environments with access to everything… Minimal disruption to business operations and a major transition accomplished without their productivity being negatively impacted in a way that costs them money.
For us, a quiet Monday morning means being spared the frantic emergency calls, tech support requests and associated fallout that are usually par for the course with these types of projects.
A win win for everyone!