server 2003 end-of-life

[clipper01]

A couple of my clients have been advised by their IT suppliers to upgrade to new OS 2012 , since MS Server 2003 support ends on July 2015. Link. Appreciate any info you have on the impact of SM2 , SMB3.
These sites are currently running presumably with SMB1 and oplocks enabled , with no issues , so my questions are

1) Is SMB2/SMB3 more 'aggressive' is it more likely to cause file corruption
2) If the IT suuplier is 'instructed' to dumb-down to SMB1 and disable oplocks , will that have any negative impact on e.g. Exchange , Sharepoint etc
3) A possible solution might be to instruct IT supplier to include virtual box with oplocks disabled , can that be done at the 'virtual' box level
4) Suppose in server 2015 ? that dumb-down to SMB1 is not allowed , any-one know what the Microsoft policy is on multiple OS systems i.e. server 2012 co-existing with server 2015

This is potentially a very nasty surprise for sites that are running old OS server systems . Maybe the "foxpro-good-for-20-years" camp need to watch out !

Look forward to any insights , Sean M

 

[clipper01]

I think I have answered my own question 4 , OS systems can co-exist , so regardless of what new OS's come down the line , SMB issues should be OK for at least the life-time of OS 2012 which will be quite a while , so I think my preferred option will be #3

Link

 

[Olaf Doschke]

1) Oplock is the aggressor. Oplocks can't be disabled with SMB2 and SMB3.
2) As Exchange, Sharepoint etc. are services, you don't have oplocks on them.
3) Virtual Box or any virtual machine system merely serves hardware as software. Whatever runs upon it, runs upon it and determines the
4) Yes, Servers can be Primary Domain Controllers, Secondary Domain Controllers or just Member Servers of a domain, so you can have several OSes side by side in a network. How hard would life be, if you would need to switch all servers in a big corparate network all at once?

Bye, Olaf.

 

[clipper01]

Thanks Olaf , to clarify on item #3 , if a virtual box just for VFP is included , can it be dumbed-down to SMB1 and oplocks disabled. I'm sure that clients and/or IT contractor/support would not want to dumb-down the main server(s) to SMB1 and oplocks disabled , oplocks is there for a good reason. Failing that , a cheap seperate server box for VFP would be a good solution.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

>Whatever runs upon it, runs upon it and determines the

...determines the oplocks etc.

The VM host will determine the oplocks for the host level, but that doesn't get inherited. If you install DOS on your virtual machine, you don't have oplocks at all on it, eg. The virtual machine mainly is a machine, having it's own OS, settings, network, NIC, and SMB setting. It's a separate machine.

If you USE \\someshare\folder\tabnle.dbf you do that on whatever real or virtual server and that OS has the file handling, including oplocks. The host only hosts a VM process, the VM file, the VHD virtual drive, but not the single files inside, that's taken care by the virtual machine.

So in any aspect a virtual machine is like a real machine, inlcuding how it reacts. The host onyl runs the machine, and the machine runs it's own OS.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[clipper01]

Many thanks Olaf , as ever a veritable mine of information and good advice