Migrating ADRMS from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008R2

Question

Hi all,
I am struggling to find an answer on this, but effectively I need to replace a Windows Server 2008 (x86) server running ADRMS with one running Windows 2008 R2 (so I can't do in-place due to architecture differences). It has a separate backend on SQL 2008R2,
but what concerns me is this: "All servers added to an AD RMS cluster must be running the same
version of Windows Server as the first server in the cluster." from here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771019(v=ws.10).aspx
My plan was to:
Spin up a 2008R2 server.
Backup the ADRMS databases on SQL.
Add it (2008R2) to the existing 2008 ADRMS cluster
Repoint everything to the new 2008R2 (DNS/SCP)
Decommission the old server.
I suspect there's a stage where I need to upgrade ADRMS for the 2008R2 schema, but not quite sure where that would slot in (maybe after I add to the cluster?)
Am I on the right track here? Last thing I want to do is mess up ADRMS.
Thanks in advance.
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Georg Thomas | Lync MVP
Blog www.lynced.com.au | Twitter
@georgathomas
Lync Edge Port Check (Beta)

Answer 1

I managed to get it working by following the steps I had mentioned above:
Spin up a 2008R2 server.
Backup the ADRMS databases on SQL.
Add it (2008R2) to the existing 2008 ADRMS cluster (it upgrades the schema at this point and the 2008 server no longer works)
Repoint everything to the new 2008R2 (DNS only) - I needed to keep the existing cluster name and you can't change the SCP
Because the customer didn't use a custom FQDN and rather used the server hostname as the URL, I ran into authentication issues, which I believe were caused by Kerberos, so I needed to manually change the priority of authentication on the _wmcs Virtual directory
in IIS to use NTLM first and then Negotiate which solved me having continually being prompted for credentials until I received an unauthorized error)
Decommission the old server.
If this helped you please click "Vote As Helpful" if it answered your question please click "Mark As Answer"
Georg Thomas | Lync MVP
Blog www.lynced.com.au | Twitter
@georgathomas
Lync Edge Port Check (Beta)