Table of Contents
Introduction
In Windows Server 2019, Microsoft introduced a brand new feature called Storage Migration Service (SMS). With SMS, you can migrate unstructured data from any Windows Server version (even Windows Server 2003 if you still have them around) into physical, virtual machines, Azure IaaS, and Azure Files. It’s super-fast, consistent, and scalable, it takes care of all the complexity such as permissions, share properties, encrypted, attributes, in-use files, network settings, names, and Active Directory membership.
For more information on how to migrate your File Servers with Storage Migration Service in Windows Server 2019, please check the following article.
In August 2019, Microsoft announced an additional set of new features when you apply KB4512534 update on Windows Server 2019. With this update, you will be able to:
- Migrate source and destination Windows Failover Clusters (General Purpose or Scale-out File Server).
- Migrate Samba Linux as source devices to Windows Servers.
- Ability to migrate between networks.
- Ability to migrate local groups and users.
- And more…
This is a huge improvement for the Storage Migration Service (SMS) led by the Principal PM, Ned Pyle at Microsoft. For more information on what KB4512534 update bring to Storage Migration Service, please check the detailed blog here.
I was migrating recently a Clustered File Server running on top of Windows Server 2016 Failover Clusters to Windows Server 2019. I hit a strange error while scanning the source (file server cluster) device. The error is the following: Dll Was Not Found.
At the time of writing this article, this issue is not documented yet in the Storage Migration Service known issues.
Fixing the issue
If you encountered this issue while migrating file servers between clusters, you need to install manually the Failover Cluster Management Tools on the orchestrator (SMS) server.
You can do this by opening a Windows PowerShell session on the SMS orchestrator server and run the following command:
Add-WindowsFeature RSAT-Clustering-Mgmt -IncludeManagementTools Get-WindowsFeature *RSAT-Clustering* | ft -AutoSize
The required DLL file that is needed by the SMS orchestrator server to perform Windows Failover Clusters (File Server) migration is Microsoft.FailoverClusters.FrameworkSupport.dll which is located under “C:\Windows\Cluster“. However, this file was already available prior to install the RSAT-Clustering management tools.
As soon as I added the RSAT-Clustering-Mgmt on the Orchestrator Server. The scan went through successfully in Windows Admin Center, and I was able to continue migrating my general purpose file server from Windows Server 2016 to Windows Server 2019 failover cluster.
I hope that the SMS team will address this issue in the next update. Thanks to Ned Pyle for his help in getting to the bottom of this.
Hope this helps someone out there!
Summary
Storage Migration Service (SMS) makes it easier to migrate your older Windows Server File Servers (2003 & later) to Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019. SMS provides an elegant graphical UI (via Windows Admin Center) that inventories data on servers and then transfer the data and configuration to newer servers—all without apps or users having to change anything. This is a really great feature!
SMS is designed to help by doing the following:
- Inventory multiple servers and their data.
- Rapidly transfer files, file shares, and security configuration from the source servers.
- Optionally take over the identity of the source servers (also known as cutting over) so that users and apps don’t have to change anything to access existing data.
- Manage one or multiple migrations from the Windows Admin Center user interface.
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Thank you for reading my blog.
If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment.
-Charbel Nemnom-
