Planning to Move AX from Physical to Virtual Servers :

Finance and Operations/AX Technical Forum
1

More elaborate question as follows :

Version : AX 2012 R3 with CU10 (6.3.3000.111)

So in this Scenario, when converting our AX Dynamics Servers from Physical toVirtual(P2V), this will be the changes:

  1. Changing of IP Addresses for all Servers

  2. Hardware Compatibility and Dependencies

  3. New Domain & DNS

What my approach as said by you will be as follows…can u pls. go thru my steps and comment.

  1. Will Restore the DB in Virutal DB which was backed up from Physical database Server
  2. Will Install AOS, during this installation will select From Existing DB
  3. Then as you said, Post AOS install from System Administration option in AX will change the IPs, Servername etc. to the new one.
    – Is this the procedure Or something else…

Please guide.

2

Is changing IP addresses, domain and DNS required? It shouldn’t be necessary. Also, are you aware of that you can convert physical machine to virtual ones (instead of reinstalling AX on different machines), e.g. using Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter?

3

Dear,

I am just 9 months exp. in AX.

The points like change of IP address, DNS etc. is the client option. They want totally to move the Physical Server. They have ordered NUTANIX Appliance on which multiple VM servers will be installed.

Current AX Servers as follows :

  • Test Server (DB and AOS on same machine)
  • Live DB Server
  • Live AOS server.

So,they want me to list any possible problems/concern in the migration process of AX. Migration I mean moving from current Physical server to the totally new servers under Virtual.

In order for me to be prepared for this, I wanted to know the steps involved for me to make the AX run on New Virtual Servers under NUTANIX.

Regards

4

All right, so your goal is to migrate AX to completely different servers. Whether they’re virtual or physical probably isn’t that important.

First of all, analyze what servers you have a which components there are: for example, you likely have report servers, help servers, maybe management reporter, servers for disaster recovery and so on. Also analyze what external systems communicate with your AX - they’ll need to be informed about changes in IP addresses and hostnames.

Consult DB migration with your SQL Server experts - they need to set up security, backup and maintenance plans, at least.

If you’re migrating to a different AD, list all services accounts you’ll have to change and plan how you’ll migrate end users.

5

For reference, the same question is being discussed in parallel on another forum.

6

Thanks sir,

You are right its migrating AX to completely different servers.

We do have Report Servers, Management Reporter.

Here No SQL Server DB expert. All I have to do it.

Reg. Service accounts. As such we have only 2 service accounts.

  • I think we can create same accounts in New Env.

Reg. the similar discussion with another forum. I will go thru.

Thanks.

7

Then make sure you become not only AX and networking expert, but a SQL Server expert too pretty soon. We’re talking about a mission-critical, enterprise-scale ERP system here. It’s not really a task for a newbie, so it will be a real challenge. :slight_smile:

You’ll have to plan how to install and configure your new SQL Server - disks, files, maintenance plans, high availability, disaster recovery… I wouldn’t dare to do it myself, as it’s not my area of expertise.

If you have only two service accounts, it means that you must be using the same accounts for several different things. Consider a more secure setup, if you’re going to reinstall everything anyway.