Routing and Remote Access Migration Guide released

If you’re running the Routing and Remote Access service (RRAS) on Windows Server 2003, you’re likely considering upgrading to Windows Server 2008 R2 because of some of the great new features like VPN Reconnect, which allows a VPN connection to tolerate brief network interruptions without any user intervention. However, you’re likely wondering “What is the best way to upgrade and maintain all of my configuration settings that I worked so hard to get just right?” Because you can’t in-place upgrade a 32-bit version of Windows to a 64-bit version, you’re likely to need to migrate from one physical computer to another. To help make that move as smooth as possible, Microsoft has released the RRAS Migration Guide.

This guide provides instructions on how to use the Windows Server Migration tools to back up the RRAS configuration on one server and then restore it to a second computer. It includes verification steps to help you ensure that your settings were moved correctly, and a list of the few manual steps that have to be performed after the migration to capture the few settings that the migration tools cannot automatically move. In the end you have an RRAS server with all of your existing settings in place, but enabling you to take advantage of the great new VPN protocols available in Windows Server 2008 R2.

You can find the RRAS Migration Guide on Microsoft TechNet at https://technet.microsoft.com/library/ee822825. Happy migrating!

Dave Bishop
Windows Server Networking User Assistance (UA) Team Lead