Editor’s Note: Chris Ward, a Microsoft Lync Server certified trainer, recently received it. This is the 10th post in a series where he will share his experiences and offer advice.
Some people feel it’s more difficult to start a new project from scratch. I always respond, “It depends where you are coming from!” With computers, networks, cloud environments, and, of course, communication applications/services, we are both blessed and cursed with existing environments that must be dealt with. We are either upgrading or installing Lync Server 2013 in an existing environment.
What does this mean if I want to move to Lync 2013 but have an OCS or Lync instance running?
Let me simplify it for you. Lync Server 2013 will only migrate to Office Communications Server 2007 R2 or Lync Server 2010. It won’t work if you have a mix of both. You must also migrate Group Chat if it is installed. Microsoft supports only side-by-side migration.
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Start training This method requires additional server platforms. You can move operations back to the older servers if it becomes necessary to rollback to the previous version. – Microsoft Technet
What does this all mean? You will create a new instance of Lync Server 2013. It is great to have a pilot group that you can move over, but not mission critical. Periodic users who have used OCS and Lync previously are a great group to use. For your Lync 2013 deployment, you will need to use separate SQL 2008 R2 and SQL 2012 servers. You cannot have the same SQL Server running a 2013 Front End Pool and also run Lync 2010/OCS 2007 R2 Front End Pools.
The upgrade is not as difficult as the Cybermen of Dr. Who. If you plan ahead, it can be quite painless. CompuDev Solutions’ Ken Snyder has done many of these migrations in large and medium-sized organizations. I was given his advice to plan, plan more, and then plan another time for good measure. Microsoft’s recommended migration flow is what I will leave you with, which is quite accurate:
Plan your migration
Install the Lync Server 2013 pilot pool
Transfer some users to the pilot pool
Add Lync Server 2013 Edge Server as a pilot pool
From pilot deployment to production
Complete all post-migration tasks, and decommission legacy pool
These topics will be covered in my SPOTO 70-336 and 70-337 (coming) courses. Technet is a magical fairy dust you can use. Make sure to double-check commands and test them in a pilot environment. Sometimes, there are “legacy” commands that are copied and pasted from OCS 2007 to Lync 2010, and even now to Lync 2013! This would be a terrible surprise in a production environment!
My friends, Lync on!
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