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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics AX (Archived) / Windows Server 2016 Up...
Microsoft Dynamics AX (Archived)

Windows Server 2016 Upgrade to AOS

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Posted on by Brandon Wiese 17,788

I've noticed that an in-place upgrade from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016 breaks an installed Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Object Server installation.

Upon completion, the Dynamics AX Server Configuration utility finds no environments, and the AOS service will not start.

Anyone share this experience?

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  • Martin Dráb Profile Picture
    Martin Dráb 237,963 Most Valuable Professional on at

    I haven't tried this scenario, nevertheless note that AOS configurations are, or should be, in Windows registry. You may want to look there to understand the problem better.

  • Brandon Wiese Profile Picture
    Brandon Wiese 17,788 on at

    It does indeed wipe the environment stored in the registry.  Error messages like "environment is incorrect" on trying to start the service.  A bunch of path errors, unable to read registry keys.

    Ultimately, I uninstalled all AX components and re-installed, and everything is working again.

    It's worth noting that Windows Server 2016 is not yet listed on the System Requirements document and is probably not officially supported yet by sustained engineering.  It usually takes a few months for them to finish testing and announce compatibility, and sometimes hotfixes or updates to AX are required for official support.

  • Suggested answer
    Vilmos Kintera Profile Picture
    Vilmos Kintera 46,149 on at

    It is typically not recommended to upgrade an OS under a business-critical system, such as an ERP platform. It is almost always better to go with a clean installation. As a disaster recover/fall-back scenario for a while the old and the new OS could co-exist, having an additional AX AOS instance if your license allows. Then if all operations are stable, you could consider stopping the AX AOS instance running on W2012.

  • Brandon Wiese Profile Picture
    Brandon Wiese 17,788 on at

    It's also worth noting that during the upgrade, the setup wizard discouraged me from doing an in-place upgrade at all, recommending a fresh install of Windows Server 2016 instead.  I'm normally not a fan of in-place upgrades to an OS, but I wanted to see what would happen, and thus on several TEST servers I went ahead and gave it a try.

    Two of the TEST servers were fully broken.  They no longer establish a secure channel to the domain controller and the Netlogon service fails to start on boot, and when started manually the problem is not resolved.  Events indicate a problem negotiating with Hyper-V integration components to the host, so running Windows Server 2016 guest on a Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V host, while officially supported, may not be without its problems (even with Gen 2 guests).

    Other TEST servers survived the upgrade with minor issues, requiring some software repair or re-installation (like AX).

    Bottom line, I will not be doing any more in-place upgrades of Windows Server to 2016.  I learned what I wanted to learn, that it's a bad idea and does not "just work", and we are warned as much.

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