CRM 2011 – restoring a CRM database from Enterprise edition to Standard edition

Today I was trying to bring some CRM database from one server and restoring them to another.

I backed up the databases and then was trying to in restore the database on the database for another CRM environment.

I was getting an error when trying to restore the database.

"Database cannot be started in this edition of SQL Server" error when restoring a Microsoft Dynamics CRM database
I had no idea what this problem was, after a bit of googling and then I worked out how to find out what version of SQL SERVER I was using on the two different instances
if you run a new SQL query on the system master database
SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('productversion'), SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel'), SERVERPROPERTY ('edition')
This returned
(No column name)	(No column name)	(No column name)
10.50.1600.1	           RTM	                Standard Edition (64-bit)
and
(No column name)	(No column name)	(No column name)
10.50.1600.1	            RTM	                Enterprise Edition (64-bit)
so basically I had two mismatched versions of SQL Server.
I then found this Microsoft KB article with the solution

The cause of the problem was this
When Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is installed using a Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition, 
a partition is created for the auditing functionality of Dynamics CRM 2011. 
The AuditBase table uses partitioning which is only available for Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise.

 

If you then run the script on that page, then back up the database.  You can then restore this database on a standard version of SQL server 2008.

Then to create a new organisation you go into the Deployment manager and choose import organisation, it will recognise any CRM databases that do not already exist on that CRM deployment.  It will then run through adding the details to the MSCRM_CONIG database and if all goes well you should have imported your organisation.