MS Ignite BRK3138 - In-place upgrade from Lync to Skype for Business

As promised in my Microsoft Ignite 2015 - Sessions, Venue, Expo post, here comes another summary / review of one of the Ignite Skype for business sessions.

Presented by the Canadian Scott Stubberfield, Program Manager at Microsoft.

This session focused on the in-place upgrade, and featured a nice in-place upgrade demo. A Lync 2103 system with two paired pools was moved to Skype4B.

Customers do not want to be forced to upgrade the hardware when upgrading the software. With in-place upgrade we can reuse all Lync 2013 hardware, firewalls, configurations, etc. Smart Setup will check with a "Windows Update" like service and download new software before starting the upgrade.

Upgrade paths
Lync 2013 (CU5) to Skype4B - in-place upgrade
Lync 2010 (CU7) to Skype4B - same process as 2010 to 2013
Lync 2010 and 2013 - upgrade 2010 to 2013 first, and then use in-place upgrade

Tri-existence (2010 + 2013 + S4B) is not supported in any way, shape or form.

Upgrade the user pool(s) first, then the mediation servers, edge and CMS pool.

The in-place upgrade process upgrades all SQL server express 2012 (SP1 or better) instances to SQL server express 2014, this for both standard edition "back-end" and local instances.

Prerequisites before starting the in-place upgrade.
Lync 2013 CU5 or better
SQL Server express 2012 SP1 or better
Windows Hotfixes
KB2858668 - Windows Server 2012
KB2982006 – Windows Server 2012 R2

I have a more detailed post about prerequisites found here:
Skype for business Server 2015 prerequisites on Windows 2012 R2

The command to move all users from one pool to another.

Get-CsUser -Filter {RegistrarPool -eq "lync2013.kressmark.com} | Move-CsUser -Target skype4b.kresmark.om -Confirm:$false

After the right click in Topology builder and publishing the new topology with Skype for business servers we need to run the

Disable-CsComputer -scorch

command on all front-ends. This to stop and disable all Lync 2013 services (so that if the server would reboot they would not start up as Lync 2013 again.)

Questions

How do we upgrade a Persistant chat pool?
Same procedure as a user pool. Right click the pChat pool, upgrade, run Disable-CsComputer -scorch, and this procedure will move all the existing chat rooms to Skype for business.

Will there be a difference to do an in-place upgrade on Windows 2008 R2 compared to one on Windows 2012 R2?
No, Windows fabric 3 will be supported even on Windows 2008 R2 as on 2012 and 2012 R2.