January 2008 - Posts
Just an FYI. There seems to be some problem updating CRM 4.0 90 Trial versions to MSDN licenses. There have been several reports of having to uninstall the Trial version and then install with the MSDN product keys. Haven't heard any feedback on the distribution keys.
Last week I had a CRM client call complaining that his CRM would occasionally take up to 20 seconds to complete some updates. This occurred often enough to be an issue for him. I sent out a query to the CRM folks and they recommended, among other things, a CRM 3.0 performance white paper. One of the things that caught my eye was configuring the SQL tempdb database. The tempdb is used by SQL as a temporary store for its working files. The white paper suggested setting the initial size of this database to about 10% of the size of your main CRM database (<org name>_MSCRM). It also recommended setting it to NOT auto grow. The default size is only 8 MB. I upped this on my client's server to 150 MB. My customer reported today that since I made the change he has not experienced the issue. Let's hope that continues.
What I assume was happening was every so often when my customer entered a transaction, the SQL server needed to expand the size of the tempdb. When it did so, the update process from my customer had to wait until the tempdb was expanded. With a much larger tempdb, the need to expand the tempdb is greatly reduced.
I must add that the white paper recommended setting the tempdb to NOT auto grow. However the CRM Team and MVPs suggested this would be a 'time bomb' and that auto grow should be retained. I've changed my client's system accordingly.
I also increased the amount of free space in the primary MSCRM database from 10 to 20 percent. Having more free space will allow the MSCRM database to grow in larger chunks. This database does need to be able to grow as data is entered to CRM. Growing in a larger chunk means this will happen less often. Plus the Maintenance Plan I have configured in SQL will massage the database periodically and keep that 20% free space so my client is not likely to see it expand while he's using the program.
I am in the middle of installing SBS 2003 R2 Premium on a client's new server. I've already blogged some of my 'experiences'. Today I ran into another 'interesting' issue. I installed ISA server but when I did the Configure E-mail and Internet Connection Wizard (CEICW) it errored. I tried accessing the server via RDP and could not. Then I had a look at the Services and found none of the ISA or Firewall services were running. Nor could I start them. I looked in the Event Applications log and found Event ID 14109, "The ISA Server Standard Edition cannot run. Either the server is using more than 4 processors, or it is configured to use the Active Directory services....". Well, this server only has TWO processors, the legal limit for SBS. However, each processor has FOUR cores. So the server is seeing EIGHT processors, double what ISA will allow. Old software meeting new hardware! How do you solve old software problems? With a service pack, of course. Googling the error message produced a recommendation to install the latest service pack for ISA. So I downloaded SP3 for ISA Server 2004 and installed. Now ISA is happy. CEICW is happy. And, I can not remote into the server so I can finish configuring it from the comfort of my den.
Well, I thought I had it figured out, sorta. As I last posted, when my SBS install would not recognize the floppy drive when it needed to install the SCSI drivers, I thought letting it use the Windows drivers was a good idea. Unfortunately those drivers were not compatible as evidenced by my Windows Server 2003 install continuing to Blue Screen and reboot. When I finally figured out how to get it to stop and display the blue screen instead of going right into a reboot (an F8 option!), it appeared to be a problem with the SCSI driver. So much for the Windows driver. But the problem still remained. How to get the system to recognize the floppy at the proper time. I Googled and found an interesting post, USB floppy drives during Windows Server 2003 R2 setup. This pretty much told me what I had to do, add a line to the driver txtsetup.oem file to define the USB floppy drive. Figuring out exactly what that line should contain and where is should be located was a bit of a challenge however. When a USB device is installed, such as a floppy, there is a registry entry made for it. Included in this entry is the 'Hardware ID'. The line for the txtsetup.oem file is basically this ID.
I found the appropriate ID in the HKEY_LOCAL_Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB area. Go there and then do a Find for the manufacturer of your floppy drive. Mine is a Sony. Here I found my ID to be "USB\VID_054C&PID_002C&REV_0703". It actually had two lines in the registry. I found using just the first was sufficient. Following the ID it appears you need to add the service, "usbstor".
The final line I added was
id = "USB\VID_054C&PID_002C&REV_0703", "usbstor"
I added it under the section that listed the drivers for Windows 2003. When I ran the install and hit F6, it asked me for the floppy as always, and read it fine as always. But during the rest of the install, it didn't bother me to insert the floppy. I'm guessing the added line gave it enough info to not need to ask me to hit Enter since the floppy was on-line.
My install seems to have worked. The server is not blue screening nor rebooting. I'll finish installing tomorrow.
I am in the process of installing SBS 2003 R2 on a new server for a new client. The servers these days don't come with floppies, nor floppy connections. But we still need them to install third party SCSI drivers. So, I ordered a USB floppy with this new server. When starting the SBS install, I press F6 when it asks if I need to load third party drivers. Then when the install programs comes up and says it can't find any drives, do I want to load specific drivers, I press S, the appropriate response. It then prompts me to insert the diskette in Drive A: and hit enter. I do and it recognizes the drivers. I select one and it says Windows has a later driver. Would you rather use the one on the diskette or the later Windows one. I first selected use the later Windows one but then it still showed that Windows didn't have any drives. So, I went back and tried again but said let me use the drivers on the diskette. Things appeared to go well, I partitioned and formatted my RAID drives, but then it prompted me to insert the driver diskette in Drive A: and hit Enter. Hit Enter and nothing happens. As much as I hit Enter, nothing happens. So, I started over and tried again, hoping something would catch. Same experience. Then I tried it without hitting F6 to specify a driver but then it flat out told me there were no drives to install anything on and my only choice was to abort the install. So FINALLY I decided to see what would happen if I hit F6, let it read my driver diskette (always could at this point), but when it asked if I wanted to use the later Windows driver, I chose YES. It still indicated that it didn't have any drives, at this point, but when I proceeded on it did present the two logical RAID drives and let me install on them! It's loading SBS as I write. YEA!
Thanks to SBS Diva Susan Bradely for providing the link to the newly released Software Development Kit for CRM 4.0. It can be found here. If you are a CRM developer, you need this.
Want to have CRM on your PDA? You might want to give CWR Mobile CRM a look see. I've used MS CRM Mobile 1.2 and it was quite handy. MS CRM Mobile 3.0 had such a huge installation manual (160+ pages) and limited functionality that I didn't even try. CRM Mobile Express was handy but without being able to edit Appointments it was of little real use to me in the field. Then I had an offer from CWR Mobility to try their product as a CRM MVP. Tonight I finally got around to installing it and am fairly impressed. It appears to give me access to pretty much all of CRM. I am just now beginning to figure out how it all works and to configure it for my use. But it looks like there are lots of options to configure. And I can access it easily with my Mogul PDA phone which means I'll have access to my CRM data from just about anywhere. And it appears that it has an Offline mode which means I'll be able to access local CRM data when I can't get into my server remotely. I'll post here as I learn more.
You can learn more about CWR Mobile CRM at www.CWRMobility.com. They have a couple of other freebies you might find of interest as well.
New Years morning brought the good news that Microsoft had once again awarded me their MVP (Most Valuable Professional) designation in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It is a great honor to be so recognized. I will try to live up to it.