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Is it possible to upgrade from Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2022, passing through Windows Server 2012 R2?

I don't know if it is possible with the "storage" version of Windows Server 2008 R2.

Does anyone have experience with this?

Greg Askew
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Walter
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    Don't know if it is possible but I would strongly advise against an upgrade from 2008 r2 to 2022. That's at least my personal opinion. Install a new server and move whatever the old server hosts. – Manu Aug 23 '23 at 09:15

2 Answers2

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There's no "Storage Server" SKU beyond 2016, and it's out of the support already.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-storage-server-2016

You have two options:

(1) Get "generic" Windows Server 2022 (Standard Edition probably, cost-wise) and move your workload there using either Robocopy, DFS, or Storage Migration Service.

a. Robocopy. It has been used by people to migrate file shares for years!

https://www.sikich.com/insight/how-to-perform-file-server-migrations-using-robocopy-part-1/

https://www.sikich.com/insight/how-to-automate-robocopy-using-task-scheduler-part-2/

b. DFS. It works, but if you don't touch DFS, you better avoid it...

https://www.sys-manage.com/Tutorials/Share-by-Share-File-Server-Migration-Using-DFS-to-Maintain-UNC-Namespace

c. Storage Migration Service. It's the most recent one, came here to stay, and recommended to stick with if you don't know how to use Robocopy.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-migration-service/overview

Some bad news is you can't have any in-place updates as you have different SKUs (say "thanks!" to the guys created Microsoft licensing policy, it has been changing only recently) and it should be full-blown new server installation and workload migration after that. Lots of work!

(2) Ditch Windows and stick with Linux or FreeBSD. You'll get better perf due to the faster network stacks, smaller security patch footprint, much better community coverage, and... you can ride for free!

If you only need NAS functionality you can do special distros with NAS functionality in mind.

a. StarWind SAN & NAS (or whatever it's called this week). It's Linux based, can do HA if needed and supports wide range of the network protocols (SMB3, NFSv3/4, iSCSI, NVMe-oF etc.). It does ZFS, XFS, and supports hardware RAID controllers which is rare. It can be virtualized easily, these guys even have pre-built VMs if you don't plan to run "bare metal".

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/san-and-nas

b. TrueNAS Core. It's FreeBSD based, rock-sold, can do ZFS, but ZFS only. It can be virtualized, but with hiccups (you have to pass-thru the whole HBA into VM, it can be tricky...). It has ugly cousin called TrueNAS Scale which is Debian Linux "under the hood" and has focus on containers, GlusterFS, and hyper convergence (HCI). This one should be avoided at least for now. Core is good!

https://www.truenas.com/truenas-core/

Good luck and happy NAS-ing :)

BaronSamedi1958
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  • it is a HP ProLiant SE1220 with filezilla ftp server, is it possible to install linux there without any issue? – Walter Aug 23 '23 at 14:13
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    I'd give it a try. Remove your production hard drives and replace them with a scrap ones and see would Linux boot and recognize all the equipment (RAID, NIC etc). – BaronSamedi1958 Aug 23 '23 at 14:30
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In place upgrades for any version of Windows Storage Server are not supported. You need to perform a migration instead.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/upgrade-overview

Greg Askew
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