Upgrading CRM 4.0 to CRM 2011

The latest version of CRM is out and many of the CRM users would like to upgrade to the latest without losing the data. This post explains the step by step procedure to be followed to upgrade the CRM 4.0 On-premise to CRM 2011 On-Premise.

1) Backup existing 4.0 CRM database:
For this login to SQL server (on which the current database exists) . Go to that database, right click and click on Tasks –> Backup, then it will show SQL database backup wizard. Give a name to backup and browse for a location where we want to keep the database and click OK.

Then it will save the backup file (.bak) in the given location.

2) Restoring that as different database in SQL server:
Restore that database as a new SQL database on the target SQL server (the SQL server used by CRM 2011).

For this we need to logon to SQL server and Right click Databases and click on Restore Database. Then we will get the Restore database wizard.
In that window enter the To Database Name. (Best practise is to end the CRM database name with “_MSCRM”, with this we can identify the CRM databases easily from all the databases on the SQL server.)

Click the ‘From device’ option on the restore wizard, this allows us to browse the file. Using this, browse our database backup. Then it will show the database in the grid, select the database and click on OK.

After this our database will be added to the list of databases.

3) Create New Organization on CRM 2011 server:
For this we need to Logon to CRM server. The login user account must have proper permissions on CRM deployment and the SQL server.

Open ‘Deployment Manager’ which is under ‘All Programs’ –> ’ Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011’. Then it will show the Deployment Manager wizard.

In this wizard click on ‘Import New Organization’ option.

Then it will open “Import organization wizard”,
a) Select the SQL server and the database name and click Next.

b) In the next screen enter the Name of the Organization and click Next.

c) In the next screen, enter the report server URL. Here we need to enter the report server URL which we used while installing CRM 2011 and click Next (Please check the report server URL using IE, to confirm that the URL is connecting.)

d) In the next screen select ‘Automatically Map Users’ option and click Next.

e) In some cases the users may not exist in the new domain on which the CRM 2011 is installed. In such cases we may get the following error.

Click on Ok then it will open the following screen.

In this make sure that the ‘Administrator’ is mapped and click Next. Then it will show the following popup if we are do not map all the users.

Click Yes.
Then Import New Organization wizard goes to next step.

f) In this step, it will verify the settings we gave in the previous screens.

After verification it will show the results. If no Errors occur, click Next. Otherwise move back and correct those errors.

As we don’t have any errors in this screen, click Next.

g) Then it will show the summary of the Import New Organization wizard.

Click Import to proceed further.

h) Then it will start importing existing database.

This step will take decent time up to 30 minutes based on the data in the organization and the server RAM and processor.

i) We will get the following screen after completing the import process of the organization.

Then open CRM and check the data.