WINS is necessary in most production environments
because the overriding dependencies on NetBIOS that were built in to
Windows have not entirely been shaken out. In fresh installations of
Windows Server 2008 R2, WINS might not be necessary, but for older,
upgraded environments, plans should be made for WINS being around for a
few years.
Upgrading a WINS Environment
The WINS service itself is
one of the more straightforward services to migrate to a separate set of
servers as part of an upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2. A simple
upgrade of the existing WINS server will do the trick for many
environments; however, migrating to a separate server or set of servers
might be beneficial if changing topology or hardware.
Migration of an existing
WINS environment is most easily accomplished through the procedure
described in this section. This procedure allows for the migration of an
entire WINS database to a new set of servers, but without affecting any
clients or changing WINS server settings. Figure 1 illustrates a WINS migration using this procedure.
In Figure 11.20,
the existing servers, OldServer1 and OldServer2, handle WINS traffic
for the entire network of fictional CompanyABC. They are configured with
IP addresses 10.1.1.11 and 10.1.1.12, which are configured in all
clients’ IP settings as Primary and Secondary WINS, respectively.
OldServer1 and OldServer2 are configured as push/pull partners.
The new servers, NewServer1
and NewServer2, are added to the network with the WINS service
installed and configured as push/pull partners for each other. Their
initial IP addresses are 10.1.1.21 and 10.1.1.22. OldServer1 and
NewServer1 are then connected as push/pull partners for the network.
Because the servers are connected this way, all database information
from the old WINS database is replicated to the new servers, as
illustrated in step 1, shown in Figure 1.
After the entire WINS
database is replicated to the new servers, the old servers are shut down
(on a weekend or evening to minimize impact), and NewServer1 and
NewServer2 are immediately reconfigured to take the IP addresses of the
old servers, as illustrated in step 2, shown in Figure 2.
The push/pull
partner relationship between NewServer1 and NewServer2 is then
reestablished because the IP addresses of the servers changed. The
entire downtime of the WINS environment can be measured in mere minutes,
and the old database is migrated intact. In addition, because the new
servers assume the old IP addresses, no client settings need to be
reconfigured.
There are a few caveats with
this approach, however. If the IP addresses cannot be changed, WINS
servers must be changed on the client side. If you’re using DHCP, you
can do this by leaving all old and new servers up in an environment
until the WINS change can be automatically updated through DHCP.
Effectively, however, WINS migrations can be made very straightforward
through this technique, and they can be modified to fit any WINS
topology.
