Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Adding a sever to an existing CRM 2011 intallation

Recently I had a harrowing experience trying to add a front end server to existing install. The existing CRM 2011 setup had UR 12 rollup update applied on the Front End, Back End and SSRS Server. When trying to install the front end role on a new server, I kept getting the following error in the Installation Wizard: "The Product key is not compatible with installed version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM".
Searching for it in the web, I found a solution to the problem, which effectively adds a registry entry to skip the error message and go through the install process. The steps are documented in detail here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/atif/archive/2012/01/22/the-product-key-is-not-compatible-with-installed-version-of-microsoft-dynamics-crm.aspx

Note: If you have other error messages in the wizard, make sure you resolve them BEFORE clicking the Next button. 

Once I was able to get through the Installation wizard error, I got stuck again during the install, and was seeing the following error in the logs:

Error| System.Exception: Action Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Server.AddServerAction failed. ---> System.ArgumentException: Requested value 'Geo' was not found.    at System.Enum.TryParseEnum(Type enumType, String value, Boolean ignoreCase, EnumResult& parseResult)    at System.Enum.Parse(Type enumType, String value, Boolean ignoreCase)

After pulling my hair out for some time, I finally found a forum post that resolved the issue. Based on the advice, I used the installer bits from MS Download Center for CRM 2011, rather than the one from the MSDN subscriptions site. Issue resolved! Thanks Amit Verma for the right answer! :)

Here is a recap of what needs to be done to add a new server to an existing install:

1. Add the IgnoreChecks registry key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM (create the MSCRM folder if it does not exist)

2. Install Dynamics CRM from  MS Download Center for CRM 2011, which is the slipstream RU6 version. Install the latest Rollup Update after the base install setup is complete.

Hope this helps save some time when you are in a similar situation!

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