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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics SL (Archived) / SL 6.5 & SL 7
Microsoft Dynamics SL (Archived)

SL 6.5 & SL 7

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Posted on by Community Member Microsoft Employee

Hi;

     I have inherited the IT management of  two companies, which use SL 6.5 and SL 7 respectively. They have been chugging along for over 10 years with some problems along the way, but in essence still delivering some measure of performance.

     I have been tasked to bring them both up to compliance and efficiency levels and fully optimize their use in their respective companies.

     My problem is that the support for SL is eroding and most of the dealers are asking us to change to AX. The end users are all for an upgrade to the latest version of SL if at all possible.

     I require expert advice on the options available to me and also if at all Microsoft or their partners are compelled to support SL if we choose to upgrade to the latest version. Thanks.

*This post is locked for comments

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    RE: SL 6.5 & SL 7

    Rick;

          Thanks again for the extensive information you have provided. I shall reinitiate contact with Microsoft and begin the process of upgrading and identifying the SL partner to work with for these upgrades( although they brought in one partner that said go AX instead). It would seem that we have grounds to demand the SL 2011 upgrade instead, so I will insist on following this path.

        I will let you know the outcome and look forward to your guidance. Thank you.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    RE: SL 6.5 & SL 7

    There have been service pack updates (they now call them CU's) to SL 2011 FP1 as well as year-end updates but that combination is quite stable.

    Microsoft's policy is to support the current release and one release back which means that, now that SL 2015 is out, you can get support on SL 2011 and SL 2015 but not on SL 6.5 or SL 7.0.

    Microsoft does all of it's support through the Partner Channel so they will push you to contact your SL vendor of record.  If that vendor no longer exists or you are not satisfied with them then there is a way to switch to another Partner.  By the way, I am a very specialized vertical market partner so I am not soliciting you to work through me nor would I even accept doing that due to the vertical nature of my company.

    As a licensed user, your companies have access to the Dynamics Customer Source site where you can find out more information about the requirements for Dynamics SL 2011 and SL 2015 and download the installation media.  However, you are best to work with an SL partner to do the install as there is a pretty extensive database migration required and, since both SL 2011 and SL 2015 are coded in VB.NET and SL 6.5 was coded in Visual Basic, if you have any customizations against 6.5 then you will likely want some assistance dealing with those.

    I have brought all my SL clients that were on SL 6.5 to SL 2011 and the process runs pretty clean as long as you are familiar with the process.  That is where an experienced Partner earns their fee.

    By the way, SL 2011 requires Windows Server 2008 or later and SQL Server 2008 or later.  The R2 versions of both are recommended over the non-R2 versions.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    RE: SL 6.5 & SL 7

    Rick;

           Thanks for the information. I will presume you might be suggesting that I upgrade both to SL 2011 since it is stable and there have been no CUs with the exception of the SL 2015? Are we allowed to call the Microsoft rep and initiate an upgrade to SL 2011, when there is a SL 2015 released?

         In all fairness, if 6.5 and 7 are no longer supported, it would be imperative to make the upgrade and deal with the consequences of upgrading the SQL version and the MS server platforms too. I figure I can count on the wisdom of this SL community to assist in advise to make the move up the product chain.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    RE: SL 6.5 & SL 7

    I have been a long-time Dynamics SL partner (exclusively SL) going back to the pre-Microsoft days when the product the Solomon.  When Great Plains purchased Solomon and Microsoft purchased Great Plains there have been consistent rumors about the demise of Dynamics SL from time to time but Microsoft has quelled those rumors and they continue to make upgrades to Dynamics SL.  SL has a certain market niche that it addresses better than GP or AX so I do not see support for SL going away any time soon.  Whatever dealers are pushing you towards AX are likely doing so, I suspect, because they do not want to support multiple ERP products if possible.

    SL 2011 has been and continues to be a very stable and functional product.  SL 2015 is relatively new and I do not have many of my clients migrated to SL 2015 as of yet but my initial testing is that it is working fine.  However, there was a recent CU release to fix several issues and you can find other reported issues with SL 2015 on this forum.  My clients basically utilize the core accounting modules which seem to be fine with SL 2015 so I cannot directly speak for the project management and manufacturing modules.  Still, I would recommend moving your companies to either SL 2011 FP1 or SL 2015.  Version 6.5, while being stable for many years, lacks some features added with SL 2011.  Version 7.0 was the first version to move to VB.NET and I would avoid that version.  Besides, Microsoft has dropped both SL 6.5 and SL 7.0 from the supported list and those versions can have issues with the latest versions of SQL Server and Windows Server so, if you are looking to upgrade SQL Server or Windows Server then you will need to upgrade their version of SL anyway.  Moving from SL to AX would be an expensive proposition and your companies would likely lose some functionality that only SL has.

    Anyway, I remain a firm supporter of SL and I have no issue keeping my clients on SL.

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