Upgrading from Dynamics CRM 3.0 (32-Bit) to Dynamics CRM 4.0 (64-bit)
Thursday, April 30th, 2009A while back, we decided to upgrade our Dynamics CRM 3.0 system to Dynamics CRM 4.0. We had a specific situation, though: moving the CRM server from a 32-bit machine onto a 64-bit machine and upgrade.
Dynamics CRM 4.0 installation is divided into two ways: one for a 32-bit and one for a 64-bit machine. We couldn’t install Dynamics CRM 3.0 on a 64-bit machine, restore the old database, and then upgrade it to Dynamics CRM 4.0. So, we followed the process below to upgrade:
- Backup CRM 3.0 (Company database)
- Install CRM 3.0 on virtual machine
- Restore Company database.
- Upgrade CRM 3.0 on CRM 4.0
- Check if all data are restored (including workflows, all customizations).
- If everything is restored and customizations are all there, Backup Company Database.
- On production server (in our case, 64-bit machine) we installed CRM 4.0 (64-bit version).
- Restore Company database (created backup in step 6).
- Using Deployment Manager tool, we created new Organization and used restored database for source.
We had a few smaller issues with the upgrade. For example, when we added a new organization (the first one was default), we couldn’t change the default organization. Also, we had an issue with sending E-mails from the upgraded CRM (which will be discussed in my next article).
The problem with the default organization in the Deployment Manager Tool for Dynamics CRM 4.0:
During installation of Dynamics CRM 4.0 you can see that there is one organization and it is set as default. When you add a new organization and set it on default, you will have a problem to get the Default Company through a server URL. For example, http://mycrm:5555 will always find the first default organization. This is because the default organization is related to web services but not for the web client. To resolve this issue you need to start Deployment Manager (All Programs -> Microsoft CRM -> Deployment Manager). You need to be a member of the Deployment Administrators group to run this tool. Remove the first organization (data are still on SQL server), set the second organization as the default, and then add a new organization which will get data from the database of the first one.