CRM 4 on Windows Server 2008 with SQL Server 2008

I just finished installing Dynamics CRM 4.0 on a Windows Server 2008 based Hyper-V Virtual Machine with all the latest and all the greatest:

  • Office 2007
  • SharePoint 2007
  • Visual Studio 2008
  • SQL Server 2008 (including Reporting Services & Analysis Services)
  • Windows Server 2008

The total size of the Virtual Machine is slightly over 20Gb. But wooooOoww, this virtual machine is super fast on Hyper-V.

If you ever decide to do run on Windows Server 2008 and/or SQL 2008, make sure to read these two KB Articles:

  1. 950100 about Support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 on Windows Server 2008-based computers and
  2. 957053 about Support for running Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 together with Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Actually, this should just work if you accept updating the installation files during the installation wizard.

Also, if you would like to use SQL Server 2008 Express for the “Dynamics CRM Client with Offline Access”, install it, as a named instanced called CRM, before installing the client. In all other cases the CRM client installation wizard would install the 2005 edition for you.
I expect you can use that same trick if you want to run the SharePoint Application Definition File Editor on SQL Server 2008 Express: install a SQL 2008 Express named instance (name:BDC) before the installation of the tool. 

Thank you Hannes, you did a great job setting up the Virtual Machine. I only had to install the CRM stuff myself!