Migrating away (up!) from SBS2008 – licensing alerts

Recently replied to an old EBS2008 TAP friend and good mucker re: his plans to migrate away from EBS2008 and thought this post might help someone out there…

I’ll start by saying – no we haven’t done this with EBS!

But concur I’d be cautious on licensing.  We did something similar with our own production environment with that other license limited server product.. SBS2008.

With SBS2008 upgrading the domain/forest, and schema to R2 didn’t appear to be an issue but transferring the FSMO roles was.  SBS was soon (e.g. 24hrs) sending alerts stating “The FSMO role does not comply with the license policy“ – I’m pretty sure eventually seizing them back!!??!!

e.g.

-----Original Message-----
From: SBSMonAcct@thefullcircle.com [mailto:SBSMonAcct@thefullcircle.com]
Sent: 10 December 2009 19:37
To: +sysadmin
Subject: Windows Small Business Server 2008: Critical Event Notification

An alert was detected on your network. Further investigation into the issue is recommended.

Computer: SBSSRV01
Date/Time generated: 10/12/2009 15:50:24
Title: The FSMO role does not comply with the license policy
Source: License Compliance service
Description:
The FSMO Role Check detected a condition in your environment that is out of compliance with the licensing policy. The Management Server must hold the primary domain controller and domain naming master Active Directory roles. Please move the Active Directory roles to the Management Server now.

 

-----Original Message-----

From: SBSMonAcct@thefullcircle.com [mailto:SBSMonAcct@thefullcircle.com]

Sent: 10 December 2009 12:02

To: +sysadmin

Subject: Windows Small Business Server 2008: Critical Event Notification

 

An alert was detected on your network. Further investigation into the issue is recommended.

 

Computer: SBSSRV01

Date/Time generated: 10/12/2009 11:50:25

Title: Forest trust licensing error

Source: License Compliance service

Description:

The Forest Trust Check in the Licensing component did not pass because error 0x8007054b occurred in function f1 [BXHE].

The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.

 

Make sure that your DNS server can be contacted and the following services are running on it: Active Directory Domain Services (NTDS), DNS Server (DNS), Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC). This server will be automatically shut down if the issue is not corrected.

 

 

Computer: SBSSRV01

Date/Time generated: 10/12/2009 11:50:25

Title: The FSMO role does not comply with the license policy

Source: License Compliance service

Description:

The FSMO Role Check detected a condition in your environment that is out of compliance with the licensing policy. The Management Server must hold the primary domain controller and domain naming master Active Directory roles. Please move the Active Directory roles to the Management Server now.

 

 

I found very little info on this last year, and in between adding R2 DC’s, Exchange 2010 (fun with mail routing), and adding SCE2010 Beta then RC into the network we ended up leaving the virtualised SBS2008 box in play – other priorities (customers!) have been more important.

Somewhat useless with helping find the cause – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd443466%28WS.10%29.aspx

very little info on it too –

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&q=The+FSMO+role+does+not+comply+with+the+license+policy&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=&fp=b432878984070c8a

Hope this helps, if just a little!