Monday, June 15, 2009

MSCRM: upgrade 32-bit MSCRM 3.0 to 64-bit MSCRM 4.0

Below are our notes from recently upgrading a clients 32-bit Small Business Server 2003 (SBS2003) with SQL Server 2000 to 64-bit Windows Server 2008 with SQL Server 2008. We hope that you find them useful.




As you may probably be aware - in the above situation, it is not possible to upgrade directly. MSCRM 3.0 is not supported on 64-bit Windows Server 2008 and MSCRM 4.0 is not supported on SQL Server 2000. So a transitional interim server is required. We set up a Virtual Machine with Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005 to act as the transitional server. Both MSCRM 3.0 and 4.0 are supported in a Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005 environment.




Before starting, you'll need to make sure that all prerequisites have been installed on the interim Windows Server 2003 and the new Windows Server 2008 machines. For details of the prerequisites, refer to the Microsoft CRM 3.0 Implementation Guide and Microsoft CRM 4.0 IG Planning document.


Also, please note that if the interim server has had MSCRM 4.0 installed on it previously (perhaps it was used for testing purposes?) then we recommend that you manually remove the Microsoft Dynamic CRM 4.0 server before starting. Just using Add/Remove programs does not remove all files and/or registry entries which can cause anomalous errors when upgrading.



In summary, these are the steps which we went through:


* Install the Microsoft CRM 3.0 Redeployment Wizard on the transitional server

* Redeploy the Microsoft CRM 3.0 installation from the SBSSVR 2003 box to the Windows Server 2003 - see Microsoft CRM 3.0 Redeployment guide

>> See this article if get the error "you cannot mix small business edition and professional edition license keys"

>> See this article if you get a warning "the specified database has a later version"


* Thoroughly test the new MSCRM 3.0 installation!


* Install MSCRM 4.0 as according to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM IG Installing document section 2-16

>> For more details on warnings and errors that you might get during the installation wizards final checks, then review the installation log here: C:\Documents and Settings\(user)\Application Data\Microsoft\Mscrm\Logs\Crm40svrsetup.log

>> See the article here is you get warning messages about "word breaker for language 9999 is not installed"

>> See the article here if you get an error that "The full-text indexes on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database are not consistent with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 full-text indexes"

>> See the here article if you have been using the unsupported currentUserHasRole to control field access.




* Thoroughly test the interim MSCRM 4.0 installation!

>> See the article here if "custom ISV Config menu options do not show".

* Redeploy MSCRM 4.0 to the 64-bit Windows Server 2008 / SQL Server 2008 environment as according to the Microsoft "How to move the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 deployment" Knowledgebase article.

>> See the article here if, when installing MSCRM 4.0, you get the error "the instance name must be the same as the computer name" from the Microsoft SQL Server System Requirements check.
>> Note that the final step to change the Organization in the Deployment Manager does take a while to execute at the stage where you can "Auto-map users" (or at least it did for us!). To speed up the process, then assuming that the old and new servers are on the same domain, then you can just "Keep existing" which is significantly quicker.


* Thoroughly test the final MSCRM 4.0 installation!

>> See the article here if "custom ISV Config menu options do not show".



We hope that this article has helped! Please comment to add any further tips and links that might be useful to people upgrading to MSCRM 4.0.



For more Microsoft Dynamics CRM resources and more including applications such as QuoteWerks, ACT! by Sage, plus software and website development tips, then please see the Hilltops IT website.

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