Migrating Windows NT 4 Deployments

Migrating Windows NT 4 Deployments
A Solidcore White PaperMigrating Windows NT 4 DeploymentsA Solidcore White Paper
Many large organizations still have mission critical applications on machines running Windows NT 4. Theavailability and reliability of these applications is a growing concern. Several factors contribute to thisconcern, including frequent patching cycles with reduced support from Microsoft, difficulty managingremote servers and hardware limitations of existing NT 4 deployments. This white paper examines theproblems enterprises currently face with their NT 4 server deployments, outlines the requirements thatany effective solution must satisfy, and explains how Solidcore can help enterprises significantly lower thecost of supporting legacy NT 4 deployments. An appendix at the end of the paper provides a ROI analysisto quantify Solidcore's value.Migrating Windows NT 4 DeploymentsA Solidcore White Paper
Problems with NT 4 deployments of these restrictions, few customers have signed up for thissupport option; Microsoft estimates that about 100 customersMicrosoft has been urging customers to migrate to their new had signed up by December 2004 - mostly governmentserver platform, Windows Server 2003. As an added push, agencies and a few of Microsoft's largest business customers.Microsoft recently confirmed that NT 4 Server support wouldstend on December 31 2004. There are several good reasons Hardware limitations on NT 4 serversfor adopting the new platform - better performance, improved Most NT 4 servers run on older systems, with lower processingsecurity, and more management features. However, the NT 4 capacity and less memory than is common on today's standardinstalled base is still very large; IDC estimates that that about production configurations. As a result, many suggested risk17% of the installed base of Windows servers still run on NT. mitigation strategies such as installing real-time anti-virusscanning, or other host intrusion prevention systems are notAs a result of the limited nature of support provided and the practical solutions on real deployments.large deployed base of NT 4 servers, enterprises with existingNT 4 deployments face significant risk to their operations. Managing remote NT 4 serversGartner, in a recent note to its customers, recommended: Managing NT 4 servers in remote locations is complex,"Until migration from NT 4.0 is complete, implement proactive cumbersome and often impossible. Microsoft acknowledgessecurity measures." as much - one of the main reasons it cites as a reason tomigrate to Windows Server 2003 is easier remoteCustomer concerns generally fall into five major categories: administration. Customers in the retail industry, for example,cite the difficulty of remotely managing NT 4 servers in theirNT 4 servers running mission-critical applications stores as a major area of operational overhead and expense.Many NT 4 servers are still in production environmentsbecause they run mission-critical applications and the process NT 4 servers as a conduit to the corporate networkof migrating to a new platform poses unacceptably high levels Many of the concerns above - irregular patch availability,of risk to the business. In many cases these applications have difficulty controlling remote servers - give rise to anotherbeen running for a number of years and many of them have a concern: preventing NT 4 servers from being used as a conduitdegree of fragility that makes upgrading them difficult to to compromise the rest of the corporate network. The hackeraccomplish in a timely and cost-effective manner. As a result, community is aware of the issues enterprises face in managingthe challenge that enterprises face, for NT servers running NT 4 servers, and can target their attacks to gain accesscritical applications, is providing the same level of availability through an NT 4 server and then propagate throughout theand recovery time that is available on other deployed enterprise.production systems. The solution requirementsPatch unavailability for NT 4 serversMicrosoft ended support for NT 4 server at the end of 2004 as These concerns provide a framework to specify thescheduled. Continuing free support is severely restricted. In characteristics of the ideal solution. For example, any solutionresponse to customer demand, Microsoft instituted a custom that imposes a 10% CPU utilization overhead would besupport program. However, it suffers from several d... [download for more]