We have 3 environments: dev, test and prod.
All 3 have different servers for web and sql. (6 servers)
We also have 1 AD FS server shared.
MSDCRM 2015 On-Premise (not hosted in cloud).
We have AD with a different OU for each environment.
We plan on integrating with crm api/sdk to get/set data from our accounting software and website.
The thing I am trying to understand is how to name the organization properly.
We want our URL's to be: (example as orgname="orga")
crm.company.com/orga
crm-test.company.com/orga
crm-dev.company.com/orga
According to our CRM Partner the organization must be unique to its environment. They were trying to suggest we use "crm-dev" as our org name for example in dev, and in test our org would be "crm-test" and in prod "crm" but to me that is not best practice sounding and only the servername should be different in the 3 environments and the orgname would be the same in all 3.
Common sense was telling me that an "organization" would be our company/corporation, and we might actually have other companies too... so lets say for example we had 3 orgs, one called orgA and another orgB. Then our urls would be:
crm.company.com/orga
crm.company.com/orgb
crm-test.company.com/orga
crm-test.company.com/orgb
crm-dev.company.com/orga
crm-dev.company.com/orgb
In all my experience with multi-environments I would think that any differences beyond the "subdomain" or server name would be bad practice but our partner is saying that we have no choice and this IS the best practice that "Microsoft Suggests too"... they say that having the same org name in multiple environments "breaks things." She also said that using our own DNS A Host records to change what URL people would use would also cause issues.
I spent hours searching the web for others asking this question but it seems I'm the only one somehow. I would think it was a popular debate since it is the top-levl of your crm information and affects the URL.
We are in the same situation as you are, with 3 different CRM2015 on premise-environments (for developers, acceptance testing and production). We use the same organization name (in this case, the name of the company) in all three environments.
We use the server alias to differ between the installations. So, given that the we have named our CRM-based product XYZ and the company is called ABC, we would have the following addresses to the environments:
XYZ-dev.company.com/ABC at server 1 (dev env)
XYZ-tst.company.com/ABC at server 2 (test env)
XYZ.company.com/ABC at server 3 (prod env)
This works fine for us and we haven't had any experience of things breaking because of this.
Related
In developer account,it is possible to create only one instance.
Is it possible to create more than one instance in servicenow paid account?.
Yes. The number of instances a paying customer has is negotiated as part of their contract with ServiceNow. Usually paying customers have a minimum of 3 instances: Production, Quality Assurance, and Development. Some customers have a 4th instance for testing new features, and some have even more. I have worked in the past for a company that had 6 instances, and the company I am currently working with has 4.
Yes. Usually, people have one production instance and it depends on the plan they are on they might have one non-production instance or two. They can be a) Production b) Dev c) test. Some also have like two dev if they have multiple projects going at the same time or some playing around and testing new features/upragdes.
We want to install Dynamics CRM 2013 for 10 users. We are thinking about 2 approaches:
Install only one instance of CRM and SQL Server on two separate servers machines. CRM server machine will have front end server role and SQL Server machine will have back end server role. All 10 users will browse and work on same instance of CRM.
Install SQL Server on a separate machine and install CRM on the machines of all the 10 users. All 10 CRM instances will point to the same organization created on SQL Server. Each users will use CRM installed on their own system but their customizations will be published on one organisation since all CRMs are pointing to the same organisation.
Could anyone let me know which approach will be better in terms of performance.
Update after the reply of Draiden and Kye:
All 10 machines will be used only for development and IFD or NLB will never be required.
In one of our previous projects, we had used the approach of 1SQL-SSRS and 1CRM (Full server). During peak development periods when around 8 users were connected to CRM doing customization, memory usage of CRM server would go to around 85% - 95%. At this point, CRM used to become non-responsive.
In order to avoid the high memory usage, we are thinking of approach 2 where CRM memory usage will be distributed among multiple machines. Also if someone wants to debug a plugin, they will debug on their own CRM (and will not block others). Having one SQL Server in the backend will enable developers to share the same data. Also their customization changes will be published on one central organization.
The second solutions involves the creation of a front-end server for each user? I don't think that is a viable (really nice way) to install crm. Also If you will be in the situation of setup something else, like IFD you will need to install and setup a NLB and teach everyone to change the url.
The first approach you are suggesting is the better one, but usually you go with 2 servers, 1 sql and 1 crm full installation. Performance wise shouldn't make much of a difference since the user using the system will be just 10 people.
So I would say that solution 1 doesn't help you much, because you still keep the db an the backend on the same machine,
while solution 2 still has a bottleneck when you are doing SQL operations, plus CRM is quite demanding, and let run the server on a user machine will choke it.
Go with a more traditional approach.
1 SQL-SSRS and 1 CRM, or if you think that you will have performance issues go with 1 SQL-SSRS, 1 Back-End server a NLB and as many front-end you want/need.
Again for 10 users having multiple front end server doesn't make much sense.
Please refer to this TechNet article for supported configurations.
For best performance, you will want to use a multi-server architecture. Furthermore, in order to have the data be shared between the users, they would need to be using the same environment.
Could anyone let me know which approach will be better in terms of
performance.
I don't think option 2 is viable, as it means installing the CRM web server on 10 machines:
Running IIS on client machines will start using up memory your end
users should be using for desktop applications.
If you ever need to scale up the front end machines, you'll need to
do this 10 times.
Since your users may not be using CRM all day, IIS will eventually
recycle, making the first time a user access the site seem slower
then expected.
I would install the CRM webs server and database on separate machines, following the minimum recommended hardware requirements.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh699840(v=crm.6).aspx
Update - If your requirement is around a development environment, I would use two servers for Production and two servers for Test (to mimic Production).
For the development environment - I'd ask developers to install CRM and SQL locally so that they can debug their own code, and then push their finished code to a central repository such as Github or TFS. It would then be someone's (or something's) role to pull down updated code, prepare and CRM solution and deploy to the next environment.
If i have a multi-tenant asp.net MVC application, something like basecamp ,what's the suitable hosting plan for me, is it a "Shared Hosting" or "Dedicated Server" is best fit for me.
Some parameters for the project:
- Each tenant will have a different database.
- Each tenant will have its own sub-domain.
- Expected number of tenants in the first year for the product, about 1000 tenant.
So how can I manage the hosting part of this project ?
Am open for any suggestions even if they are not part of my question.
To decide which infrastructure best fits your application you need to take into account parameters like how "active" your tenants will be or how "heavy" your application is.
For example, a simple, read only application for 1000 user may fit a pretty small dedicated server. But a different system may need a couple of DB servers and 3 web servers in a load balanced configuration (a basecamp-like with 1000 users may need a configuration like that)
You should not underestimate this problem: I don't think that a single server would be powerfull enough, and when you have more than one server your sysadmin problems start to grow :)
Remember that another viable alternative is hosting your application in a cloud environment (ie: http://aws.amazon.com or Microsoft Azure). But sometimes going to the cloud need a different approach on application's architecture.
Also, remember to take into account consideration like the availability of your application (ie: what happens when the server goes down?)
In medium to large organizations what team or group typically support middle tier components like Oracle Application Servers?
(Unix Team, DBA Team, Or Application Development/Support Team)
In a client server application design the delineation of ownership between the server and the client is very clear. In the client server case the Unix Administrators manage the servers and the development support team manage and support the clients. (and the DBA's support/manage the database)
Recently at our shop the lines have become blurred; the introduction of an Oracle application Server (OAS) has popped up;
OAS seems to require a very unique set of skills but also show some similarity to the client server skills. (part Unix Admin, Part Dba, Part Application Developer/Client Support)
What have others done when confronted with this kind of challenge......??
Does a completely new team form that exclusively supports the Middle Tier??
Our It Group has 3 Unix Admins; 3 Application Support staff; 3 Dba's to give the perspective of the size of the teams....
There are a couple of different options, to my mind:
1) Roll it into the application development/support team as this is part of an application that isn't necessarily where only Admins are useful. There should be a separation between development and support to some extent as different tools may be used and some may have a stronger skill set for one over the other such as if one prefers investigating things then support may be a better fit.
2) Platform management team which is a separate group where there is a separation of the layers involved in the applications the company produces. I used to work for a company where the middle tier and back-end were managed by one team that was separate from the Applications group which seems appropriate if there is the plan of having that middle and back-end tiers become a platform for the company to pitch to other companies to use how they see fit in terms of making their own applications on top of this API.
I can see a logic in using either method depending on how one sees what the IT arm offers in a sense.
For large organizations, you generally eventually get to a point where there are dedicated teams to manage the middle tier web servers and application servers.
The problem for smaller organizations generally comes that when you first deploy the app servers, there may not be enough admin work to justify a separate person in that role, at which point you have to cobble together time from other teams. It's not particularly unusual for DBAs to manage the app server (particularly for Oracle DBAs managing Oracle Application Servers). It's also not particularly unusual for the Unix admins to manage the app server. Either way, though, some of the work will inevitably benefit from input from the other team.
IMHO there should be a single "Oracle" team, comprising DBA's, unix admins, application admins, and even a network person for big installations. There is really only one system, although it has multiple tiers and technologies. You do not want four teams all passing the buck round when a system fault occurs. Ask me how I know ;)
We are looking at a standard way of configuring the various "endpoints" of our application. Our application is a distributed system with Windows Desktop applications, Windows Server "services" and databases.
We currently configure each piece using XML files. This is getting a little out of hands as we work with larger customers who can have dozens of Servers running our application and hundreds of desktop clients.
Can anyone recommend a Microsoft technology or a third party that would allow us to centralize all that configuration information and manage it in a one place for all our applications? Any changes would be "pushed" to the endpoint(s) that are interested.
For example, if we were to change the login for one of our database, we would make that change on the database, then reflect that change in our centralized system. Following that last step, any service that needs to connect to the database would be notified of the change (and potentially receive the new data). How and what each endpoint does with that information is outside the scope of the system.
Our primary business is not "Centralized Configuration Services". We are a GIS company that provides solutions for various utilities worldwide.
I've done a couple of things to give myself this functionality over the years. I build enterprise applicatons that may be distributed across many servers. I don't want to bury config settings in each services config file or each web server's web.config file. For application specific stuff I usually create an application settings table in the app's database. The table only has two fields. SettingName and SettingValue. I then write a web or wcf service whose sole function it is to retrieve these settings. I write a function called GetSetting where you pass "SettingName" and it returns SettingValue or an empty string if your setting is not found. This way I can store all application settings for all components of the application in one spot. Maintenance and troubleshooting for this is really easy, I'm not hunting through scads of config files spread across a dozen web and app servers.
For larger scale apps I might create a separate AppSettings database where I add a new field to my table mentioned above. ApplicationName. My web or wcf service for this approach has the same method call (GetSetting) only at this scope I pass ApplicationName and SettingName and it returns SettingValue or an empty string.
Doing either of these things allows you to centralize all app settings for any size application or IT shop. It has worked really well for us.
You could use RSS together with BitTorrent to distribute changes. See Wikipedia. It is not MS specific however, but should provide the flexibility you need - a configuration server holding the configuration and providing the feeds needed to configure the clients and possibly servers.
Any VCS through a secure channel?
For example, git through ssh (both available in cygwin).
I think the first step is to have the secure channel (if you want the push ability, pulling might be different).
As for managing the "versions" in different "branches", what's better than a version control system?
As it goes for the Microsoft requirement, well the Microsoft sofwares in that exists in that area would suck pretty bad in your case (as in not the best tool for the job).