Relocating Windows Server 2003 Workloads

An Opportunity to Optimize

On July 14, 2015 Microsoft will withdraw

extended support for Windows Server

2003 after twelve years of reliable service.

Those who are still running workloads on

Windows Server 2003 will need to move

their workloads elsewhere. Those who are

currently running Windows Server 2008

R2 may also be looking to upgrade to the

current version.

When you migrate your current Windows

Server 2003 or 2008 workloads, for the

very first time you will have many choices

available to you, not just the next new

version. You may, in fact, decide to assign

various workloads to several of these

choices to optimize performance, reduce

operating costs, or both.

In the next section, we’ll discuss why it’s crucial to migrate off of Windows Server 2003.

You should, however, see this transition as an opportunity to optimize and dramatically

improve your ability to manage your data to achieve greater results. As Microsoft Technet

suggests, “Pause to look carefully at your options. This is one of the largest IT opportuni-

ties of this decade, and the next opportunity to innovate not only in the datacenter, but also

in the delivery and production of applications that drive today’s businesses.”

There is much you need to know before you upgrade to a new server platform, and

time is running out for you to plan and execute what you will shortly see amounts to a

mandatory migration.

From Complex Change to an Opportunity to Optimize

Why This Migration Should be Considered Mandatory

Before you move anything, however, you’ll

need to collect a great deal of detailed

information about your existing environment

to make the best possible choices. The goals

of this white paper are to:

1. Inform you as to why it is critical to move

off Windows Server 2003 before July 14,

2015

2. Explore how this migration presents great

opportunities to optimize and improve

3. Clearly identify what data you need to

collect and analyze about your existing

environment before you proceed to migrate

4. Examine options and toolsets that assure

comprehensive data collection and accurate

analysis

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The SituationWhat Does it Mean When Extended Support is Withdrawn

When Mainstream Support was withdrawn, the only services still available were no-charge incident support, warranty claims, and design changes. Those all end on July 14, 2015. All Microsoft announcements about the impending withdrawal describe the potential business impact as follows:

“will mean no more updates or patches from Microsoft, which can result in a less stable and less

secure infrastructure for your organization.”

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No Updates

Microsoft will no longer develop or release any

updates after ending support. To put this in

perspective—37 critical updates were released

extended support. Imagine what impact zero

updates will have on your infrastructure.

No Compliance

After support ends, your organization will likely

fail to meet most industry-wide compliance

standards and regulations. This could result

in lost business or dramatically increase the

cost of doing business, in the form of high

transaction fees and penalties.

No Savings

The costs of maintaining your legacy servers

can add up quickly. Maintenance costs for aging

hardware will likely increase, and you will have

to deal with added costs for intrusion detection

systems, more advanced firewalls, and network

segmentation—all simply to isolate 2003

servers. Staying put will likely cost more in the

end.”

But they all go on to state that, “The end of

signal the beginning of a new stage in your

organization’s evolution.” Before you can begin

that new stage, you’ll need to know much

more about your environment than you know

today.

initial release & beginning of support cycle

end of mainstream

support period

end of extended

support period

2006March

2010July

2015July

Looking Ahead

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Opportunities and Challenges

12 Years of Innovation

Technology today has come a long way since 2003, especially server technology. But rather

than just focus on the many things that have improved since then, let’s start by pointing out that

there are over 140 features in Windows Server 2012 R2 that didn’t even exist in 2003.

There have been over 140 features added to the Windows Server

family since the release of Windows Server 2003.140+

In addition to the significant security and operational risks inherent in remaining on Windows

Server 2003 there are also some very powerful opportunities, benefits that will come from

upgrading to a new, modern operating system and platform.

VirtualizationMulti-Tenant High-Density

Websites

Network Access

Protection

Feature-Rich Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Low-Cost Storage

Active Directory Federation

ServicesPowerShell Dynamic

Access Control

Joining a Domain from Off-Premises

Hybrid Applications DirectAccess ...and over 130

more features

Looking AheadOpportunities and Challenges

The Cloud

Cloud Computing wasn’t being talked about beyond a few computer laboratories working on the

earliest virtualization technologies in 2003. Today many workloads can be more closely managed

for higher performance at lower cost than ever before. Advances in Active Directory Federation

Services (ADFS) now make it seamless to run some workloads on-premise and others in the cloud,

keeping it completely transparent to users. They simply login to the network and have access to

resources wherever they are located.

Many cloud service providers (CSPs) offer Windows Server 2012 R2 in the cloud.

The Challenge

The biggest challenge you face today is time. Very little time remains between now and July 14,

2015 for companies to conduct the necessary due diligence, discovery, and planning required for

an effective and efficient migration to a new operating system running on a modern platform.

Again, from TechNet:

The opportunities to advance are not marked by mere lift-and-shift actions, but the

consideration of how each and every application, workload, embedded system, is or is

not meeting the demands of today. This is a leaps and bounds moment that will require

effort on all fronts of IT, and once embraced, will benefit IT, the business, employees, and

customers in ways that were not previously possible. This is your moment to innovate

within infrastructure and applications.

To begin the process for this transition, you’ll need to conduct a careful, thorough assessment of

your current state.

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Due Dilligence

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Step 1 - Inventory & Characterize Your

Existing Workloads

Before you begin moving workloads, you’ll

need to know exactly what workloads you

have, and characterize each based on what

resources they require to perform optimally.

You need to identify short-term peaks and

long-term peak loads rather than averages

and ensure you provision resources for these

correctly during your infrastructure migration.

Disregarding peaks while provisioning will only

cause performance degradation. In order to

incorporate performance peaks properly into

your analysis, you need to gather detailed

workload historical data.

Performing deeper analysis of each workload

will also help you determine if each application

is memory intensive or CPU intensive, and

what specification of capacity will give you

the performance you need. In terms of storage,

it’s important for your systems managers to

understand which storage volumes should go

to instance-store vs. EBS, provisioned IOPS, or

S3. They will also need to move your network

attached storage (NAS), storage area network

(SAN) and translate that into required cloud

storage capacity. For your network, you will

need to know how much throughput you will

get, and how your costs will differ for internal

vs. external traffic.

Step 2 - Determine Optimal Infrastructure

Settings Based on Your Performance Targets

Cloud Service Providers like Amazon Web

Services (AWS) provide multiple server

“instance” types and pricing plans each

designed to accommodate specific uses.

A server “instance” includes different

combinations of processor (CPU) power,

memory, network throughput, and storage

capacity to give you the optimal resources for

each of your workloads.

How much processor, memory, network, and

storage capacity you set will depend not only

upon the nature and requirements of each

specific workload, but also on your performance

goals for that workload. Choosing the wrong

settings can result in overprovisioning, which

causes you to spend more than is required for

satisfactory performance of a less significant

workload, or underprovisioning which can result

in poor and inadequate performance.

Accurate decisions regarding optimal settings

to achieve your performance goals requires

that you evaluate each available option against

accurate data regarding the specific workload

characteristics and performance requirements

of each individual workload.

The only way to obtain accurate data regarding

workload characteristics and performance

Conducting a Thorough Current State Assessment

Due DilligenceConducting a Thorough Current State Assessment

requirements involves exhaustive data

collection and analysis of each workload in

your environment, performance benchmarking,

and predictive analytics. Many attempt to do

this manually on spreadsheets, but without the

right tools this can quickly become complex

and time-consuming. Armed with the right tools,

however, this key process can be accomplished

far more quickly, and deliver far greater insights

into your performance opportunities.

Step 3 - Determine Optimal Pricing Plans

Every cloud service provider offers a variety of

pricing plan options to accommodate varying

workloads and requirements. For example, on

AWS you can use a pay-as-you-go model called

the On-Demand pricing plan, or by paying some

upfront costs, lower your overall hourly rate.

There are also a few different types of plans

that allow you to reserve capacity for future

use.

One of the great advantages of cloud

computing services is that you only pay for

what you use. Since you can obtain resources

rapidly only when you need them, and release

them rapidly once you are finished using

them, effective management of resources and

requirements results in significant cost savings.

Once you become familiar with the available

pricing plan options, you’ll need to identify and

understand the pattern of “On/Off” times and

“Active/Idle” times for each of your workloads.

Based on the usage pattern, you can then

determine the optimal pricing plan that is most

cost-effective for your configuration.

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The ToolsWhy Choose Amazon Web Services (AWS)

As stated earlier, for the first time ever users

have options, choices of where to move their

workloads for optimum efficiency when they

perform the necessary migration away from

Windows Server 2003 before July 14, 2015.

Choices such as what operating system to

move to, and what platform to run those

operating systems on. Making the right

choices can dramatically increase service

levels while, at the same time, reducing

operating expense. Developers can find more

or fewer advantages, utilities, and other useful

tools depending upon choice of platform.

These choices come from a variety of

providers, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google

and others. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

(Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides

resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is

designed to make web-scale computing easier

for developers.

Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface

allows you to obtain and configure capacity

with minimal friction. It provides you with

complete control of your computing resources

and lets you run on Amazon’s proven

computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces

the time required to obtain and boot new

server instances to minutes, allowing you to

quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as

your computing requirements change. Amazon

EC2 changes the economics of computing by

allowing you to pay only for capacity that you

actually use. Amazon EC2 provides developers

the tools to build failure resilient applications

and isolate themselves from common failure

scenarios.

According to NetworkComputing, quoting The

451 Group’s Carl Brooks, “Amazon stands alone

in cloud infrastructure delivery, and everyone

else is following behind or carving out their

own niche.”

Amazon EC2 Running Windows Server

Amazon EC2 running Microsoft Windows

Server® (2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012

and 2012 R2) is a fast and dependable

environment for deploying applications using

the Microsoft Web Platform, including ASP.

NET, ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight™, and Internet

Information Server (IIS). Amazon EC2 enables

you to run any compatible Windows-based

solution on our high-performance, reliable,

cost-effective, cloud computing platform.

Common use cases include Windows-based

application hosting, website and web-service

hosting, data processing, media transcoding,

distributed testing, ASP.NET application

hosting, and any other application requiring

Windows software.

AWS provides pre-configured machine

images (AMIs), which enable customers

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The ToolsWhy Choose Amazon Web Services (AWS)

to start running fully supported Windows

Server virtual machine instances in minutes.

You have a choice of many versions of the

software, with or without SQL Server. By

using one of our AMIs, the Microsoft software

licensing is handled by AWS and included in

the monthly bill.

Amazon EC2 running Windows Server provides

seamless integration with existing Amazon

EC2 features like Amazon Elastic Block Store

(EBS), Amazon CloudWatch, Elastic Load

Balancing, and Elastic IPs.

Amazon EC2 benefits include:

Elastic Web-Scale Computing - Amazon EC2

enables you to increase or decrease capacity

within minutes, not hours or days. You can

commission one, hundreds or even thousands

of server instances simultaneously. Of course,

because this is all controlled with web service

APIs, your application can automatically scale

itself up and down depending on its needs.

Completely Controlled - You have complete

control of your instances. You have root

access to each one, and you can interact with

them as you would any machine. You can stop

your instance while retaining the data on your

boot partition and then subsequently restart

the same instance using web service APIs.

Instances can be rebooted remotely using web

service APIs. You also have access to console

output of your instances.

Flexible Cloud Hosting Services - You

have the choice of multiple instance

types, operating systems, and software

packages. Amazon EC2 allows you to select

a configuration of memory, CPU, instance

storage, and the boot partition size that is

optimal for your choice of operating system

and application. For example, your choice of

operating systems includes numerous Linux

distributions, and Microsoft Windows Server.

Reliable - Amazon EC2 offers a highly reliable

environment where replacement instances can

be rapidly and predictably commissioned. The

service runs within Amazon’s proven network

infrastructure and data centers. The Amazon

EC2 Service Level Agreement commitment

is 99.95% availability for each Amazon EC2

Region.

Secure - Amazon EC2 works in conjunction

with Amazon VPC to provide security and

robust networking functionality for your

compute resources.

Inexpensive - Amazon EC2 passes on to you

the financial benefits of Amazon’s scale. You

pay a very low rate for the compute capacity

you actually consume.

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This use-case involves a Cloudamize customer in the large financial industry. Their environment

included a total of 1,100 server instances, or “virtual machines,” all running Windows workloads,

with 75% running on Window Server 2003.

To understand the current environment, assess costs, and determine the best strategy for migra-

tion to AWS, Cloudamize collected data about their infrastructure over a 30-day period. This

was used to generate a clear understanding of what their infrastructure would look like in AWS,

what improvements they could expect in performance, and how much they could anticipate in

cost reductions.

Cloudamize produced a high-level cost analysis to support the necessary business decisions

and provide detailed migration settings.

By transitioning from on-premise to a cloud solution on AWS, the company reduced their annual IT

spend by over 45%, a savings of over $800,000.

reduction in annual IT spending

savings achieved by

moving to AWS

Windows Server 2003 environment

migrated to AWS

Start with the right tool for your assessment: Cloudamize Assessment Tool for AWS.

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The Cloudamize Solution

Success Story: Large Financial Company Cuts Costs by 45%

45% 800K 75%

Cloudamize Assessment Tool enables you to measure your existing workloads, project optimal

sizing in the cloud to support performance goals, understand total cost of ownership (TCO),

and support a highly efficient migration process by defining requirements and providing the

corresponding AWS settings for the new environment.

Cloudamize collects data from your existing on-premise environment, both physical servers and

virtual machines, and maps each to specific AWS options, finding the best AWS configuration for

that specific workload, and providing the best performance at the lowest possible cost.

Get Started - Plan Your AWS Migration with Cloudamize

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Planning your migration from Windows Server 2003 requires more time and more work than you

may anticipate. With less than a month until withdrawal of extended support, the time is now to

begin using Cloudamize Assessment Tool to collect and analyze the data that will help you plan

your most cost-effective and performance enhancing upgrade.

Get started today. Visit www.cloudamize.com for more in-depth information about making the

most of your move from Windows Server 2003.

Cloudamize, Inc.

1735 Market StreetSuite 2502 Philadelphia, PA 19103 215-557-3735 www.cloudamize.com

©2015 Cloudamize, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

About Cloudamize

Cloudamize is a cloud analytics company that helps businesses make data-driven

decisions at every stage of the cloud lifecycle. Customers and partners utilize the

SaaS application to effectively assess, plan, and manage workloads within the cloud.

With Cloudamize, companies have experienced significant monthly savings on their

cloud deployment, while simultaneously increasing performance. With more than half

a million servers analyzed to date, customers trust Cloudamize to provide detailed

visibility into their workload metrics and recommend optimal strategies to actively

manage their cloud infrastructure.