Our company recently migrated our Laserfiche 10.4 applications and databases from 2008 R2 servers to Windows Server 2016 servers. Knowing that downtime couldn't be avoided for some parts of the migration, I planned it to have the fewest possible activities scheduled for the our period of downtime (in other words, completing as many tasks in advance as possible).

Posting a general list of our migration steps in case anyone else is curious about what that looks like.

1. Acquired all servers (application and database)
2. Installed SQL Server on database servers
3. Migrated over custom databases that we had created to support our processes (along with associated scheduled tasks, etc.)
4. Activated IIS and Message Queuing Server features/roles on new application servers to support Forms and Workflow 
   1. https://enterprise.arcgis.com/en/web-adaptor/latest/install/iis/enable-iis-2016-components-server.htm

   2. https://manuals.gfi.com/en/mailessentials/content/administrator/installation/system_requirements/msmq_2016.htm

5. Installed Forms WITHOUT configuring

6. Installed Workflow WITHOUT configuring

7. Created folder paths that some workflows were dependent on

8. Took repository metrics (size, filecount, etc.) for testing

9. Created scheduled job (using 3rd party app) to regularly check for differences between the source drive containing our Laserfiche volumes and their destination on the new server. This allowed us to gradually copy over 3TB of data in the weeks leading up to migration.

10. Sent out memo to users with info on what to expect and how to handle it. Mainly that our server name was changing, so they would need to update their existing repository connections and saved URLs, etc.

11. Here is where the downtime starts.

12. Stopped original Forms and Workflow services on source server

13. Ran our file copy one last time to collect all the changes 

14. Unregistered repository on source server

15. Uninstalled Laserfiche on source server

16. Migrated Laserfiche Audit Trail and repository databases from source to destination server (using SQL Server Backup and Restore method)

17. Installed Laserfiche Server on new server

18. Registered repository on new server, with connection to the migrated repository database

19. Double-checked repository settings, including db connection and image drive location

20. Migrated Forms and Workflow databases from source to destination server

21. Configured Forms and Workflow with pointers to new Laserfiche and SQL Servers

22. Updated connections in Forms and Workflows (like "Save to Repository" tasks, "Run Workflow" tasks in Forms. Repository connections and condition triggers, SDK scripts, "Retreive Business Process Variables" tasks and anything to do with external databases in Workflow)

23. Overwrote custom databases with most recent data

24. Downtime ended at this point

25. Updated Quick Fields server connections

This is a bit simplified but represents the general process. Accounting for some troubleshooting along the way, we had just over 6 hours of downtime during the migration.

Other important resources used:

• https://support.laserfiche.com/kb/1012831/moving-the-laserfiche-server-to-a-new-server-computer
• https://support.laserfiche.com/kb/1011155/moving-microsoft-sql-server-or-msde-to-a-new-server-computer