I've just completed what, I believe, amounts to the perfect storm of
an upgrade. The client was moving from SBS 2003 (not R2) on a virtual
machine to a physical Windows 2003 64 bit server. They were also
upgrading CRM3 SBS to CRM4 Professional. As SBS was running SQL 2000
and CRM3 does not run on 64 bit machines the database couldn't be
easily moved from one to the other.

So we have an upgrade, migration across domains and a move to 64 bit.

The eventual path to success was the following:
1) Upgrade SQL 2000 to 2005
2) Upgrade CRM3 to CRM4 on the SBS virtual machine
3) Backup the database and transfer it to the new 64 bit server
4) Install CRM4 on the 64 bit server
5) Use deployment manager to attach the old database

Points of note:
* You can upgrade SBS SQL 2000 to 2005 but you may need to completely
reinstall SRS as in my case the discs simply would not allow for SRS
to be upgraded
* If you get "Malformed XML Found in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Saved
Queries" this could be an issue with the saved queries table but it
could also be a permissions issue. In my case the user who had
installed CRM was not the domain administrator. Upgrading as the
domain admin did not cut it. Promoting the original user to a domain
admin and upgrading did the trick
* If you get "Action
Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Server.InstallConfigDatabaseAc tion failed.
Invalid user name. Failed to validate username for given domain. Only
existing domain usernames and email addresses are allow" then try
unplugging the network once the required components are installed.
This cleared the error for me
* On a 64 bit box, make sure you are running IIS in 64 bit mode and
therefore ASP.Net is registered in 64 bit mode. If not, CRM will get
past the pre-checks, start installing and then bomb out leaving a mess
which cannot be repaired, uninstalled or installed over
* The deployment manager can be used to add an organisation with the
Professional license. It simply swaps out the default database for the
new one and maps the users as usual (although, I again hit an issue
with the setup user being someone other than domain admin. The error
was "At least the setup user needs to be mapped before this
organization can be imported". I had to swap map links to make it
work)

Good luck if you come across a similar situation

Leon Tribe

Thank you for pointing out that during the install without IIS registering
the 64bit system that it leaves an unusable mess that cannot be recovered
from easily.

I spent about an hour in the registry one day recovering from that, and then
forgot to do an export and messed it up again and gave up.

Michael

"LeonTribe" wrote:

We also encountered a similar situation and came up with an "off the wall"
method of overcoming the problems associated with this type of upgrade.

Customer had 3.0 on a SBS with SQL 2005 and bought a brand new 64 Bit Server
on which to run CRM 4.0 (licence upgrade from SBS to Professional, Customer
did have SA)

We were unable to do the upgrade on the SBS box, due to space constraints
and that the customisations needed to be tested prior to going live.

What we ended up doing was the following:

We backed up the version 3.0 database on the SBS box
On the new box we created a virtual 32 bit server and installed CRM 3.0 and
SQL
Then we restored the 3.0 backup created on the SBS box
We then upgraded to version 4.0 in this virtual 32 bit environment
and then backed up the new version 4.0 database to the 64 Box's Raid Partition
We then installed 4.0 on the 64 box and pointed it at the database created
above
We then deleted the virtual 32 bit server.

We could not see any other way of doing this at the time.

Ivor




"bayareacrm" wrote:

On May 13, 8:27*am, Ivor Whibley
<IvorWhib...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
Hi Ivor,

I almost went down this path when I had difficulties with SRS on the
SBS box. I had a virtual PC ready and waiting but in the end didn't
need it. In my case I attached it to the SBS domain so I wouldn't have
to mess about with the v3 redeployment manager. Did you attach the
virtual image to the SBS domain or did you redeploy when moving the v3
DB?

Leon Tribe

Hey Leon

We attached the virtual image to the SBS Domain in that case.
We are upgrading another site from Sql 2000 and 3.0 to a 64 bit box and
version 4.0 and will probably do the same, but will get one of my specialists
to look over your Perfect Storm solution first.

Ivor

"LeonTribe" wrote: