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Microsoft CRM 3.0 and 64-bit
One of our new customers is purchasing hardware for their deployment, and they wanted to know if they could run Microsoft CRM 3.0 on 64-bit hardware.
Looking at the official hardware/software specs on http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/crm/product/systemrequirements.mspx, you'll see that there is no mention of 64-bit support (or lack of 64-bit support). We pinged both Microsoft CRM guru Ben Vollmer and Microsoft pre-sales tech support. Ben replied immediately and said that CRM 3.0 is supported for the 64-bit SQL database, but not for the Windows Server running the CRM web application. Microsoft pre-sales tech support took about a day to respond, and they said:
The CRM Web application is not supported on Window Server 2003 64 bit. You can have the CRM databases installed on a Windows Server 2003 64 bit OS running SQL 2005 64 Bit version. So if you want to use Windows 2003 64 bit with SQL 2005 64 bit, you will need to have SQL and CRM on separate servers with SQL located on the 64 bit server.
Additional Information:
As the load on a CRM system is scaled up, it shows up in the database tier, not the middle tier. So supporting Windows Server 64-bit and SQL 2000/2005 64-bit on the database server does open up a lot of scalability headroom. Putting 64-bit support on the mid-tier CRM application server doesn’t buy much and therefore is not tested or supported. If customers are interested in using 64-bit to support better performance, the answer is “Yes, MS CRM v3 is designed to permit that where it matters, on the data tier.”
So this is great news for our customer, and anyone else interested in 64-bit hardware! As more and more 64-bit hardware hits the marketplace, it would be great if they would update the "official" Microsoft CRM 3.0 hardware and software requirements to reflect this information.
As a reminder, both SQL Server Standard and Enterprise editions support 64-bit hardware.
Posted by Mike Snyder on May 3, 2006 in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 | Permalink
Comments
Is not there a problem with ASP.NET 1.1 not beening officially supported on 64-bit hardware? I have had the same problem with SPRINX CRM.NET and AFAIK there has been a workaround to get it working...
Posted by: David Podhola | May 4, 2006 6:33:04 AM
This has been working for me: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=894435
Posted by: David Podhola | May 4, 2006 6:35:00 AM
Hi Mike
Just out of interest - I've tried to redeploy CRM 3.0 onto a 64bit server - and it's possible to get all the pre-reqs installed, but the actual CRM installer will not recognise IIS and fails the web site selection screen and IIS confirmation checks.
Shame!
George
Posted by: George Bliss | Sep 26, 2007 8:47:40 AM
I too, have just come across this problem. There I am with a nice clean Xeon Server, fast Drive Array, Win 2003 x64 R2, SQL 2005 (running DotNetNuke), thinking, "It's about time I tested CRM 3.0"
1.) Needs .NET 1.1 (!!!) - so my .NET 2.0 & .NET 3.0 are no good, sort that...
2.) Fails to recognize IIS 6.0 (!!!)
Check up here and elsewhere, doesn't work.
What a pile of pants, Microsoft. Shame on you!
Brian
Posted by: Brian Milnes | Nov 17, 2007 10:25:45 AM
My solution is to run the 64 bit machine (host) holding the DB and creating a virtual machine (32 bit - guest); and loading the app on the virtual (use VMWare - not free). Please provide feedback on what you think of this solution.
Posted by: chris | Dec 10, 2007 2:24:56 PM
