Use of Differential Back-up possible for CRM 2011 to CRM 2016 Migration

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Can a SQL Server differential back-up independently go through the upgrade/migration process? The idea is to take a snapshot/full backup through the upgrade process (very time consuming for a large database) and then minimize business down time by running a differential backup through the same process then back-up and restore the upgraded 2016 differential database to the "full" back up database. The differential "upgrade" would be a small amount of data, take a short amount of time and minimize time between system cut-over.

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Community Member on at

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Hello,

I don't think so. you need to migrate with the full database because when we are going to migrate so of the upgradations are required.

Hope you can understand what I mean!

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Aric Levin - MVP 30,190 Moderator on at

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Hi William,

I am not sure what your upgrade plan is, but in order to upgrade from 2011 to 2016, you will need to go through upgrade to 2013/2013 SP1, 2015 and then 2016.

When upgrading CRM 2011 to 2013, one of the things that Microsoft does is merge tables in the CRM database. In CRM 2011 and previous versions, data was stored in two tables for each entity. It has been reported that an upgrade from CRM 2011 to 2013 can fail when the table merging occurs if some of the data in the tables is unexpected.

Saying that, what is your plan. Are you planning to use SSIS to transfer the data, or just backup/restore from one environment to the next to the next...

Take a look at the following TN article regarding upgrading from Dynamics 2011/2013 to Dynamics 2016.

technet.microsoft.com/.../hh699673(v=crm.8).aspx

Hope this helps.

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SergeyT 310 on at

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No, that won't work.

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Community Member on at

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Let me clarify just in case. We know how to do the upgrade, in fact we have done it a few times to create test environments. We are using the backup and restore method. What I am asking is if after doing this method based on a production backup, can we then say a week later use the same method on a differential backup. The last step would be restoring the differential back-up now upgraded to 2016 to the previously upgraded 2016 database creating an up-to-date upgraded version of the production database ready for cut-over.

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Thank you Jagmohan - please see my clarification below. Not sure that will change your answer. Are you saying you cannot upgrade a diff backup at all because it does not have the code only the data or something like that?

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Aric Levin - MVP 30,190 Moderator on at

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Hi William,

I don't think you will be able to do this with differential backup/restore, due to the version differences and the database changes between the versions.

I hope you get a different answer or suggestion, but I highly doubt it.

Hope this helps.

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Community Member on at

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Thanks Aric. I guess I could have simplified the question by asking whether there's a reasonable way to import 2011 CRM data into a 2016 org. However, judging from the responses it seems there isn't or at least nobody has tried it. :-(

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SergeyT 310 on at

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You can try 3rd party tools for data migration\synchronization between several Dynamics CRM instances. For example KingswaySoft tool - www.youtube.com/watch

There are other products like Scribe with main purpose to move data between different systems and databases.

You may be syncing data from source organization to target organization. And when you are sure that target organization works as expected and has all data you can switch users to it.

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