Upgrading from an evaluation version to a fully licensed version of a product is a frequent outcome of a pilot or lab deployment project. After all, why go through all the trouble to deploy a complex environment again, if you already have a working one?
Over the years, this has come up regularly for LCS and OCS, and I wanted to give a quick summary of the process for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (covered in this TechNet bulletin), especially considering that there is a major caveat that you should be aware of early in the process.
The in-place upgrade from evaluation to fully licensed version can ONLY be performed if you are using Volume Licensed editions of OCS.
If you are using non Volume Licensed editions, then the only supported technique is to do a separate server or pool install, and then migrate the users to the new server/pool.
In either case (Using Volume or Non Volume editions of the software), you do *NOT* need to upgrade/replace the following roles, as they do not need a license key to install, and will not expire:
- Mediation Server
- Archiving Server
- Monitoring Server
- Communicator Web Access
- Group Chat Server
This means that the only server roles you DO need to upgrade/migrate from evaluation to fully licensed are:
- Director
- The core server/pool roles where users would be homed (SE or EE makes no difference)
- The Edge Server roles.
In the case of a Director, it’s probably easiest to simply deactivate the server role, uninstall the Eval software and re-install with the fully licensed media. Since there are no users to migrate, this can be accomplished with only minimal downtime, even if there is not a load balanced group of directors to provide HA. The alternative is to bring up a new director server, and then change the IP address and settings on the other servers to point to the new Director.
Please do read the TechNet documentation for details and planning guidance on the upgrade process, but I wanted to highlight the issues around non Volume Licensed editions and upgrades.