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CRM 2013 & CRM 2015 Parallel Install same organization

I am looking to upgrade from CRM 2013 to CRM 365 on-premise. I have set up a new VM with SQL and would like to know if I can install CRM 2015 on it and restore the database from the production CRM 2013 on it. It would be the same organization and it would use the same production Active Directory. I got to the point where it asks me to create an OU in AD. I cancelled because I was not sure if running the same organization simultaneously would cause any issues. I wanted to do this in order to test and see how it works. I would then like to upgrade that test VM server to CRM 2016 (all while leaving the production CRM 2013 running) and then to CRM 365 on-premise. Can this be done? Does it cause any issues? Will having two organizations named ACME affect my production negatively in any way?

Hello Brosello,

Hope you are well.

The process you are describing is totally fine.

At the stage where you install CRM 2015 on a different VM, this will create unique security groups on whatever OU you decide. It can be the same of production or not.

They will not conflict. You can then run 2 orgs with the same name on 2 different servers, because the DNS you use for both machines is different and points to a different IP address.

url: prod.domain.org/proddbname vs crm2015.domain.org/proddbname

For the sake of simplicity tho, you may want to evaluate to change the friendlyname of the organization when you import PROD on crm2015, so you are sure you are logged in at the upgrade test DB and not prod itself.

Please let us know if anything is not clear above and we will gladly help.

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