Installation of CRM 2011 on windows 2012 AND SQL 2012:

Hardware:

·         Virtual Machine >> 6 GB

·         Virtual Machine >> 4 GB

Software:

·         First VM: 

o   Windows Server 2012

o   SQL Server 2012

o   SSRS Reporting Service

·         Second VM: CRM

o   Windows Server 2012

Main Issues Encountered:

Issue 1:     

·         Tried to install CRM, Installer didn’t start Normally

o   It started then disappeared

o   After checking the task manager, it was running as a background operation but actually not taking any memory so it was only residing in the background

·         After Research, and referring to some blogs, the installer won’t start since some files in System32 folder in windows 2012 are different from those in 2008 R2, and others are not found

·         Then

o   I took a backup of the following file : svrmgrnc.dll

o   Deleted It from System32

o   And took the same file from a windows server 2008 R2 machine and pasted it in the same folder

o   Also I added 3 other needed files taken from the 2008 R2 machine which are not found in windows server 2012. Those files were the following:

§  Microsoft.Windows.ServerManager.dll

§  rmConfigHelper.dll

§  ServerManagerCmd.exe

NA: The reason for using those files is, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 installation program uses a deprecated command line tool called ServerManagerCmd.exe to install and manage Windows features during the installation. ServerManagerCmd.exe depends on a few other libraries including rmConfigHelper.dll, svrmgrnc.dll, and Microsoft.Windows.ServerManager.dll.

This issue is understood from the following post by Daniel Craig

·         I started the installation and then it started normally

Issue 2 & 3:

·         During the installation there is this stage were we need to add the users for CRM service accounts

·         ·         At this stage, I added all the users “by the book” 

h               Check for details about service accounts

• As I continued the installation :
• I encountered an error (issue 2) that stated the database was not valid in the last step before the installation starts.
• After research through technet posts I needed to download two roll-Ups for CRM 2011 (Roll-Up 6 and Roll-Up 12) and I could then pass that last validation.
• But as the installation started, it did hit an unidentified Error(issue 3, which I didn’t document) but after some trial in order to solve this error, It turned up to be that I need to use the Network Service Account for all the services although it is not supported
• So I restarted the installation which completed as before but during the Installation
• At the beginning this error will appear, but the installation will continue



•  Then, during installation, two errors were shown, those errors were related to Windows Indexing Service which is no longer available for Windows Server 2012 and these are screen shots
  
  
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• The Installation Ended with the following screen shot

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• NA: This screen shot was taken after SSRS was installed on the CRM server (So this is a second trial of installation), but the same screen was shown.
• Although the Installation was completed with those errors, I couldn’t actually open the CRM site, it always showed a 404 page not found
• I am not sure if I needed any other step, but I didn’t have more time to search to solve this issue. But It could use some more research

Issue 4 and 5:

·         Even that the site wasn’t working, I was trying to install the SSRS connector on the server to see if it had any effect on the site, during installation the installer couldn’t locate the Report Server Instance(Issue 4)

·         So I installed the SSRS as a feature on the same CRM Server

·         Then I tried to start a new Installation for the connector which directly crashed with an error that It couldn’t install one of its pre-requisites (Issue 5)

o   I tried to download updates, there wasn’t.

o   After research it turned out the SQL uses a new C++ Redistributable version - 10.0.40219 – while CRM2011 uses Redistributable - 10.0.30319, so I Un-Installed the redistributable version 10.0.40219 and the start the installation

o   The Installer could find the new SSRS instance, but at the last step, which is the verification step it showed a validation issue on the Database.

This was the point where I stopped the work. I believe some more research can be done to make this possible.

NA: Microsoft will have a new release for CRM2011 during Q2 of this year which hopefully will solve all of these issues.

Thank You.