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Have a dozen or so VMs that are file servers, some of which also host printers. They are 2012 and 2012R2. Deciding whether to attempt in-place upgrade or migration to new VMs using Storage Migration Service. What are your thoughts on advantages and disadvantages either way? Thanks!
- Hi Greg. I always recommend migrating old physical file servers to new VMs, as that ends their hardware ties and gives them more flexibility in the future. With 2012 R2 you will also need to "double-upgrade" in order to get to WS2022 and I think triple upgrade from WS2012. The File Server role runs very well as a VM. The main downside to this is just time - an upgrade is pretty fast and mostly seamless these days; a migration of course takes far more time. It's worth the effort for the future-proofness, IMO. One nice thing is you can start with SMS and if you don't like it, switch to inplace upgrade. Much harder to do the reverse 🙂
