Vista Migration Planning for the Conservative Architect

 

This recipe outlines a conservative plan for migrating to Vista. This view assumes that there are no compelling business reasons within your organization to migrate to Vista any sooner. The consensus opinion across the IT community right now supports this claim.

 

The proposals that follow are based on the following assumptions:

• It is unacceptable to allow your Microsoft operating system platforms to ever go off of Extended Support. The reason behind this is that you must always be able to obtain and apply the latest security patches to your Windows environment.
• Windows 2000 goes off of Extended Support in July 2010.
• Windows XP SP3 is tentatively due out in the first half of 2008. If this happens, then XP SP2 would go off support either in 1H 2009 or 1H 2010 depending on whether Microsoft allows either 12 or 24 months of support.
• Windows XP goes off of Extended Support in April 2014.
• Windows Vista is likely the last major release of Windows. Any future modular versions of Microsoft Windows are likely to be based on Vista.
• You must eventually upgrade to Windows Vista. There is no practical alternative (Linux or Mac) looming on any horizon for at least the next 5-10 years.

If we can agree on the above points, then the upgrade plan might go something like this:

 

If your client population is mostly all Windows XP SP2

1. After XP SP3 gets released in 2008 and has proven stable, upgrade your client population to XP SP3. Assuming that there will never be a XP SP4, this will keep you under security patching support through April 2014.
2. Time the start of a Windows Vista conversion project depending on the length of your lease cycle or PC refresh cycle. For example, if you are on a continuous three year lease cycle, you can kick off a Windows Vista conversion project in 2009 and start rolling out Vista-equipped images starting in 2010. That would allow your normal three year lease machine yearly replacements to wash out one-third of your XP SP3 machines each year and have the majority of your Vista conversion done by the end of 2013.
3. In this example, starting your Vista conversion in 2009/2010 has a few major benefits. Your ISVs and in-house software developers get about two years from now (2007) to adjust their products to work with Vista before your first production machine gets cut over to Vista. Secondly, faster and more Vista-capable desktops and laptops will be released by your hardware vendors by the time you are ready to roll Vista out in your environment. Also, if you are planning to use the Vista transition to migrate your user community from having admin rights to running as a standard user, then you will benefit from giving your ISVs and in-house developers time to get their products working under restricted security contexts.

If your client population is mostly all Windows 2000 and you CANNOT move to Vista in the 2009/2010 timeframe

 

If your client population is mostly all Windows 2000 now, then you cannot wait as long to make a move. You also need to execute two upgrades, but you must rush the move to XP SP3 prior to July 2010. To keep your client machines patchable, you should upgrade to XP SP3 when that becomes available as follows:

1. After XP SP3 gets released in 2008 and has proven stable, upgrade your client population to XP SP3. If you are still running Windows 2000, you are likely looking at a total hardware swapout as part of this process. Be sure to spec out the new hardware for Vista, and not XP! Assuming that there will never be a XP SP4, moving to XP SP3 will keep you under security patching support through April 2014. As long as Microsoft delivers XP SP3 sometime in 2008, that will give you at least a year to retire your Windows 2000 machines prior to July 2010. (You definitely should not choose XP SP2 since that will go off support either 12 or 24 months after XP SP3 gets released in 2008).
2. Next, time the start of your Windows Vista conversion project depending on the length of your lease cycle or PC refresh cycle. Know that your XP SP3 machines will go off patching support in April 2014, so plan backward from that date, leaving enough cushion before the April 2014 cutoff to retire all XP SP3 machines from your environment..

If your client population is mostly all Windows 2000 and you CAN move to Vista in the 2009/2010 timeframe

1. Note that you only have until July 2010 to get off of Windows 2000, so plan backward from there.
2. Wait for Vista SP1 to come out (should either be in 2H 2007 or more likely some time in 2008) before deploying any Vista machines into production. Best practices tell us to never deploy new major releases of Windows until at least the first service pack comes out.
3. Starting your Vista preparations in 2007 or 2008 doesn't give your ISVs and in-house developers as much time to adjust their products to work with Vista, so there might be more compatability issues to battle using this approach. You will also be forced to deploy Vista on hardware that might not fully meet the Vista's ideal performance requirements.

If you still have any Windows XP machines that need to be upgraded to XP SP2, Sharpe Business Solutions can build a single EXE Windows XP Service Pack 2 upgrade package for your organization. We will also provide automated upgrade packages to help you with your Windows XP SP3 migrations when SP3 becomes available.

 

The price for a vanilla Windows XP Service Pack 2 automated upgrade package for your enterprise starts around US $500. Please contact us at sales@sharpebusinesssolutions if you have other special requirements or problems with upgrading to XP SP2 or if you have any questions at all about the possibility of our building an automated Windows XP SP2 upgrade deployment package for your organization.