Installing the DHCP Role on Windows 2012 R2 Server

Unable to install DHCP server role on Windows 2012 Server Essential.

When you try to install the DHCP Role on a windows 2012 R2 server, then the role installation might just stop with the error "0x800f0922".

Searching for this error message shows a astonishing amount of questions about this, so you are in good company.

Some solutions tell you to disable automatic web proxy detection, or disconnect the network cable from the server during the installation of the DHCP role.

When you wish to know what happens, then look in the %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\DHCP for some logfiles.

In our case the newly installing dhcp server detects a already running dhcp server in the network and so refuses to install a local DHCP server.

So it's clear why disconnecting the network cable solves the installation problem, the other dhcp server is then no longer visible.

But why, why is preventing the installation of the dhcp server role?
And why, why is there such a cryptic nonsense error message instead of a real error message?

Migration of MS SBS 2003 to MS SBS 2011

Microsoft has a good document about the steps to migrate a SBS 2003 server to SBS 2011.
It is normally easy and well documented. But as always, there are things not working es expected or documented.

Here a few things:

Migration fails when joining the domain (dcpromo)

• When installing the new server it should automatically join the old domain
• If that join fails, then the migration wizard shows a fatal error and tells you to restart with the whole installtion. (Of course at this point you already had waited about 1-2 hours)
• When you google (or bing) arround, you will see that a "recovery" of the setup process is still possible. Look here for more details.
• One problem might be, that your migration account (usually the Administrator) is using a weak password, one not meeting 2008R2 complex password rules
• Another might be, that your migration user is not member of all required groups

DHCP reservations are not migrated

• Yep, can occure, sometimes it works, sometimes not
• In that case export the leases from the old server and then either add them manually on the new server. See here how to do it almost automatically

After mailbox migration to the new server, the mailboxes are not available and/or the owa shows just a empty screen after login

• Make sure the all required exchange services are running (For example the "MS Exchange RPC Client" is one to not correctly autostart after a server reboot

Other potential MS exchange migration issues

• Access to smtp, pop and imap is no longer allowed with plain text passwords. So you should confiure your clients to use either POP/IMAP with (start)tls or/and with SSL
• IMAP and POP3 connectors are not started by default, you have to enable these services in the service manager
• For external SMTP access to your server (for non-outlook users) it is best to create a SMTP connector on Port 587 (Submission port), that way you can prevent problems when your ISP blocks connections to the standard smtp port
  

Fax migration

• You still have to configure the fax service on the new server before doing the fax migration