Friday, October 20, 2006

Relocate Remote Web Workplace to a different server

If you have a client with Small Business Server 2003, they may have gotten used to using the Remote Web Workplace to access workstations and other network resources. When the client grows and you need to migrate them off one server, Microsoft has a transition pack that breaks most restrictions on SBS. However when you retire the orginal SBS server, there is no built in function to move RWW to a new server.

Note: In order for RWW's built-in OWA link to work, the RWW system needs to be installed on an Exchange server.

The process to move it is:

Install TSWEB on the new Windows 2003 Server
  • Open Add/Remove Programs from the Control Panel and open the Add/Remove Windows Components
  • Double click the Application Server from the list or hightlight the entry and press the Details... button
  • Enable ASP.NET (which will install other components)
  • Double click the Internet Information Services (IIS) entry or highlight the entry and press the Details... button
  • Double click the World Wide Web Service entry or highlight the entry and press the Details... button
  • Enable the Remote Desktop Web Connection
  • Press OK through the remaining dialog boxes and provide the i386 files as needed

This will install components that are needed and place them in http://servername/tsweb

Copy selected files from SBS Server to new Windows 2003 Server
  • Copy the entire contents of C:\Intepub\remote from the old server to the new server
  • Copy the entire contents of %programfiles%\Microsoft Windows Small Business Server from the old server to the new server. This is probably over kill but it gets all important files.
Copy selected registry keys from the SBS Server to the new Windows 2003 Server
  • At the SBS server, open Regedit and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SmallBusinessServer
  • Select the entire key and export it to a .reg file via the File >> Export command
  • Copy the file to the new server
  • At the new server, double click the .reg file to merge the contents with the current server's regeistry
IIS Modifications
  • Install an SSL certificate on the IIS server. I always encourage clients to purchase commercial SSL certificates but if you install the certificate services on the new server, you can issue a self signed certificate.
  • Add a virtual directory called Remote that points to the C:\Inetpub\Remote folder
  • Right Click the Remote directory under the default website.
  • Create an application pool for the folder.
  • Set the .NET level for the application pool to 1.1
  • Make default.aspx the top priority document

Note: This is not a microsoft supported procedure. I developed this entirely through experimentation. I wouldn't expect to get any offical MS support for these modifications.

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