CRM database move

Question

At this moment I'm at a client which has 2 CRM servers. It seems that somewhere in the middle of an upgrade project things have stopped.

There are 2 CRM servers at the moment:
1 = version: 4.0.7333.1352 - Web Application Server, Organization Web Service, Discovery Web Service, Help Server, Asynchronous Processing Server, Deployment Web Service, SQL Server
2 = version: 5.0.9688.583   - Full Server, SQL Server

The DNS records all point to the new version 5 server. On both servers SQL server is installed and the databases are present. The Organization_MSCRM database is present on both servers. When I shutdown server 1 than CRM goes down. This tells me the databases on the Server 1 are being used.

I want to create a new SQL Instance on Server 2 and move the databases from server 1 to this new SQL Instance. Then change the CRM configuration to this new SQL instance.

My question is:
- Is this possible and are there procedures I can follow?

Thanks.

Answer 1

It's possible, crm 2011 supports named instances.

I would do the following:

1. Backup ORG databases
   
2. Install new instance of SQL 2008 on server 2
3. Restore all ORG CRM DBs to named instance
4. Uninstall CRM 2011
5. Install CRM 2011
6. Use deployment manager to import org

This is probably the simplest way I can think of. You could also try restoring the mscrm_config to the named instance and try to get it up and running that way.

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Musings on Information Technology

Answer 2

Thanks!

This sounds like the way to go for me!
I'll probably will not be able to get to this very soon, but this is very helpfull for my action plan I needed!

Thanks again!

Gr,

Ronald