A question relating to moving the EE "Data"

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Good day!

Given the expertise with Essentials Experience here, I thought I’d see if anyone has tackled this problem before.

A customer had a server running Windows Server 2016 with the Essentials Experience role installed and used to configure shares and user accounts. At some point, Windows got fairly corrupted and stopped installing updates. This condition was not noticed by the client for a very long time. We were brought in to fix. We were unable to get the server to install updates, even with extensive troubleshooting by Microsoft. In the end, we spun up another domain controller, replicated AD over to it, migrated DHCP and DNS to it and transferred all the FSMO roles over. At this point the domain is running on the new DC, but I’d really like to get the Essentials Experience components running again, but have no idea of how to do that. The EE role is installed on the new DC, but the configuration has not been run. I am willing to pay for consulting.

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So you did a (successful) AD domain migration from Windows Server 2016 Standard/Datacenter to another Windows Server 2016 Standard/Datacenter install, added the Windows Server Essentials Experience (WSEE) server role to it, and now you can’t get the Windows Server Essentials Configuration wizard to run? If so, then I’ve never seen/come across such a situation before I’m afraid.

Typically, as soon as you add the WSEE server role, you can then complete the configuration of Windows Server Essentials (i.e. run the config wizard) by simply clicking on the link that’s provided to you within the Server Manager (where it says that additional configuration is required), or by simply restarting the server. Thus, about all I can tell you is to open back up the Server Manager, and see if you can locate the link to finish configuring WSEE on the server. Otherwise, you can try manually running the config wizard by executing the “EssentialsRoleConfigWizard.exe” file that can be found within the server’s “C:\Windows\System32” folder. Lastly, you could try completely removing the role from the server (via the Server Manager), rebooting the server, and then adding it back again to see if that happens to shake things out for you.

Other than that, you might want to try posting your question over on MariĆ«tte Knap’s Server Essentials Community website seeing as she’s an expert on doing migrations and has lots of guides and tutorials available over on her site (and you’re more likely to get additional “experienced” eyes on your question over there). She also offers consulting services as well if you choose to go that route.

Best of luck.

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Thanks for the reply Mike. I did not run the configuration wizard after installing the WSEE role. I was worried that it might cause problems by overwriting existing domain configuration information. If that’s not going to happen, then I’ll run the configuration wizard.

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By default (and by Microsoft’s design), the configuration wizard will setup the server as a primary domain controller if an AD domain does not already exist on the server. However, if the server is already set up as a domain controller, then the configuration wizard should recognize that and just configure Windows Server Essentials on the server accordingly (without messing about with the existing domain configuration). For more info on that see:

Deploy Windows Server Essentials in an existing Active Directory environment

Thus, you “should” be fine to run the configuration wizard on your existing DC. That being said… Microsoft designed the behavior of the configuration wizard (not me), and so I make no guarantees whatsoever that your existing domain configuration will remain completely untouched. Just make sure that you have a working backup of your server before you proceed as a just in case.

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