Question

We will soon be migrating company data from our pre-production server to production with Microsoft Ax 2009. I believe that there are two ways to do this and would like to know of any issues that might arise with the second. This is migrating data across servers and not a simple case of duplicating company data on the same Ax 2009 service.

1. Use the Import / Export functionality. Administration -> Periodic -> Data Export/Import, create a new definition group and then export it. Recreate the same definition group on the second server then import. Here’s an example how to do it for Ax 2012.
2. Export/Backup the SQL Server database from the first server and restore it over the second. We then would merely be eliminating our test and template company data from the second server. The Ax servers need to have the same patches and development layers installed first. I note that we would need to edit the ServerID value within SysServerConfig table afterwards.

Thanks

Answer 1

The Backup/Restore way to do it is at least 10 times faster.

There are some issues to be aware of though:

• Ensure that references to the file systems are correct (e.g. Document parameters)
• Server configuration setup
• UAC cache file issue described here

Update 1:

For AX 2012 you will also need to have the same model store on the production server as well, this can be accompliced by using database backup/restore or using export/import of the object store as described here.

Update 2:

Update 1 is partly rubbish, both data and model store are copied in the SQL backup/restore. No need to synchronize the database afterwards! But it may come as a surprise.