Windows Server 2003 Migration Planning Assistant - Third Party Applications

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The final post in this series covers the Migration Planning Assistant recommendations for Third Party Applications, and I'll start with the one that hopefully you won't be encountering.

Report an incompatible application

If, during your discover and assessment phases, you found a third party application that is not supported on Windows Server 2003 and holding you back from upgrading, Microsoft wants to know. Please email your application name and software vendor to isvupgrade@microsoft.com.

Upgrade on virtual machine

Your third-party applications may be migrated to run on Windows Server 2012 R2, brings Microsoft’s experience delivering global-scale cloud services into your infrastructure with new features and enhancements in most areas of the server infrastructure. Move to Hyper-V as your hypervisor to host Windows Server 2012 R2.

You may be able to run the application 'as-is' on Windows Server 2012 R2, or you may need to update or shim the application to achieve the necessary compatibility.

Technologies involved with this solution:

Windows Server 2012 R2
Virtualized server

Upgrade on new hardware

Your third-party applications may be migrated to run on Windows Server 2012 R2, brings Microsoft’s experience delivering global-scale cloud services into your infrastructure with new features and enhancements in most areas of the server infrastructure. You will likely need new hardware to run Windows Server 2012 R2.

You may be able to run the application 'as-is' on Windows Server 2012 R2, or you may need to update or shim the application to achieve the necessary compatibility.

Technologies involved with this solution:

Windows Server 2012 R2
Physical server

Top Considerations:

Confirm that running this workload on a physical server is required. Running workloads as Virtual Machines offer more flexibility and tend to be more cost effective

Planning Application Virtualization

When deploying applications on virtual machines, follow the technical documentation for the specific app. There may be different deployment procedures, depending on if you are installing the app on a physical or virtual server. The following is a list of best practices for deploying applications on virtual machines:

  • Read the technical documentation. Each product has detailed documentation on supported deployment scenarios. Not every product recommended for physical environments is supported in virtual environments. Plus, if the product is supported, it might require additional configuration for virtual environments.
  • Apply best practices for specific applications. The appropriate configuration of an application running in a virtual environment depends on the organization's business requirements and the app's instructions. Application vendors usually publish common best practices and update them during the product lifecycle. Therefore, check regularly for updated documentation.
  • Test in an isolated environment. Before you deploy an application to production, we highly recommend that you test it in an isolated virtual environment. You can then resolve potential issues without disrupting current services. You can also optimize virtual machine and application settings based on the tests that you perform.

For more information, go to
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/solutions/virtualizing-enterprise-applications.aspx.