Now I'm certain NONE of this is best practice. But on the really small sites with minimal to no resources and time definitely not on your side you'd be surprised what you learn.
Did you know sometimes (as long as the Raid controller or drive controller) is EXACTLY the same you can just "pick up" an SBS 2003 and DROP it onto the new box?
Of course being able to mirror the O/S onto something else helps to play but it's an interesting thing I've run into. I much prefer a clean install or swing myself. But there is there odd time you can't. Let's just say the client LEGALLY owns SBS media but it's original RTM. Won't slipstream easily if at all. Newer servers need SP1 or you get problems I've run into (like not working!)
So if the original server is dying and you have no MOLP SBS 2003 SP1 media handy, what do you do?
Take a shot and mirror that O/S onto another drive and give both servers a common point. (IE: Same model of raid controller).
It may involve pulling the new controller out and dropping onto the old server to get the drivers to load up.
I've actually had a 6 year old Dual 2.8 Xeon O/S boot up on a current board by picking up the drive array and going "Click".
70% of the time it works. Not recommended at all. But if you have no other options, it IS nice to know it can work sometimes.
The other one I had a while back was a Windows 2000 server off a Pentium III dropped the whole O/S onto a new Pentium 4 3.0 with hyperthreading. Since the old O/S wasn't prepped for multiple processors it freaked. Turned off hyperthreading and it worked (Reporting only one processor).
Neat eh?
Anybody had other times when flying by the seat of their pants they've run into something neat?
Well all else fails, make an offering to the computer gods. Preferably in small unmarked bills.