Transition from WS2016WSE to WS2022WSE (standard)
Just found your site and from everything I’ve read so far it looks promising. Just figured I’d ask for advice on my particular server upgrade scenario.
Have a 6 year old Dell server purchased with WS2016 Essentials. Purchased a new Dell server with WS2022 Essentials only to find that the experience has been deprecated. It works so well for a small office setup. Glad I found your site as I was not looking forward to a more manual server management setup.
New server is still in WORKGROUP, has the File and Storage Services role turned on but not in use. Do have the shares from the old server backing up daily to the same folder structure on the new server.
Old server has Server Folders, Server Backup, Windows Defender and Health Report ON.
From what I’ve read so far, it appears WSEE would install fine on the new server, and then would need to uninstall the client connect on each computer and then reinstall from the new server. But I haven’t yet found how to handle the .local domain name, can the new server use the same one or should a different one be established?
How should user accounts be handled? Re-create on new server after WSEE is installed? Don’t care about client computer backups, they can just start over, but would like for client computer user profiles to not be overly disturbed. Currently have mapped drives to the server folders but of course the new server is at a slightly different computer name. Can the old server be renamed and the new server be set to the old server name before the client connect gets reinstalled?
Attached is a list of the programs installed on the new server. Would any of them create issues for the WSEE installer?
Thanks,
Chris
- CGaertner asked 5 months ago
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If you want to guaranty a successful install of the Windows Server Essentials Experience (WSEE) on Windows Server 2019, 2022, or 2025, then I STRONGLY suggest that you start out with a brand new/clean (i.e. straight out-of-the-box) install of Windows Server with no other applications, roles, or features installed on it.
If you’re still wanting to attempt the install on your existing (non-clean) server, then I strongly suggest that you make sure that you have a working backup of it so that you can restore it back if things don’t end up working out as expected.
Essentials must either be or see a domain controller… The Essentials configuration wizard will automatically setup your server as a primary DC in your domain (allowing you to choose the .local domain name, etc.). Otherwise, you’d need to natively join your server to an existing primary AD DC within your domain BEFORE running the Essentials config wizard. That way, the config wizard will recognize the existing domain controller and will configure the Essentials server as a member server within the existing domain (without making it a DC).
You cannot run multiple Essentials servers within the same domain (at least not without jumping through some hoops anyway) and so, you’ll need to decommission your 2016 Essentials server before installing Essentials onto your 2022 server. Also, Essentials is NOT compatible with the Windows Admin Center and so you should remove that before attempting to install WSEE onto the server (I don’t recall of I added a block to the WSEE Installer for that, but if not, then I probably should).
All that being said… Please note that I do not provide technical support for Essentials and so you’re pretty much on your own there I’m afraid. I try to help folks out where/when I can, but I’m just not able to provide support for Microsoft’s products I’m afraid. So… Proceed at your own risk. ; -)
- Mike answered 5 months ago
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