Twitter Image

Dynamics CRM and SQL Server with SMB as storage is currently unsupported

Written by Stéphane Dorrekens
Thursday, 29 January 2015 10:39
We recently encountered a situation where the Dynamics CRM SQL Server instance was installed with SMB for the data files storage which is a possibility available since SQL Server 2012 (cfr: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh759341(v=sql.110).aspx)

The Installation had an issue deploying a new organization and the Deployment manager would fails with "System.IO.IOException: The network name cannot be found"
After tracing the steps with process monitor; we saw that the deployment manager was prepending the SQL Server name. IE; the sql server data files are in \\SMB\Share\Data; but the deployment manager tries to copy the new MDF to \\SQLSERVER\SMB\Share\Data.

We could find nothing proving this configuration was supported or unsupported, so we raised the issue with MS support who confirmed the issue and escalated it to the product group team; which finally confirmed this is an unsupported configuration

"SQL server configured with SMB shares was not tested from CRM perspective.
When an specific environment or product version is not tested from this specific team we cannot support it."

As a side note; there's a workaround which is to generate an organization on another environment; backup it, and restore/import it in the SMB environment, but that still leaves it in an unsupported state.