Dynamics AX 2012 R3 CU8 Installation Steps

Dear Friends,

Greetings and Wish you all Happy New Year! Hope you had a great start!

In this blog post, I will be sharing my experience on upgrading CU8 to my existing AX 2012 R3 environments. I had to upgrade on 6 environments and let me tell you the installation experience of CU8 is quite different from my previous experiences with AX versions and there’s a set of things you would need to complete.

You can read about the CU8 Release, what’s included in the update, Help content over here - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/axsupport/archive/2014/11/19/cumulative-update-8-for-microsoft-dynamics-ax-2012-r3-now-available.aspx

Based on the installation guide and other technet articles I have prepared my own steps which helped me to install in multiple environments, Thought to share with you below:

1.        Backup AX2012 R3 Model and Prod database

2.        For a test upgrade, you can Restore to a copy of both model and prod database

3.        After restore, Check permissions to see if the aos service account is mapped rightly to the restored database

4.        Install new aos pointing to the restored database

5.        Change system service accounts in AX

6.        Change Server configuration , Batch Server so that it points to the new AOS

7.        Refresh WCF Config from client (Generate a new one if prompted to)

8.        Export the newly configured axc file

9.        Go to Lifecycle Services -> Create a new project for the environment you are planning to upgrade CU8

Tip - Make sure you enable Active scripting in your IE Settings in-order to work with the new Lifecycle Services Dashboard

a.        Open Internet Explorer, click the "Tool" button in the menu bar, select the "Internet Options" button and then select the "Security" tab

b.         Select the "Internet" area, select "Custom Level" and go to the "Security Settings - Internet Zone" box.

c.        Click the checkbox to enable "Active Scripting" under the Scripting section and then click the OK button to apply the settings.

d.        Restart your browser when finished to apply the settings and enable JavaScript

10.     Download the installer package from System Diagnostic  menu in LCS

11.     Run the installer on AOS box

12.     Create a new certificate via the wizard

13.     Upload the certificate in LCS

14.     I used the aos service account below here

15.    

16.     Once installed, Run the LCS Diagnostic tool to discover the environment which we need to upgrade

17.      Run Discover environment wizard to discover the environments

19.     Upload the environment to LCS

20.     Now go to System diagnostic in LCS -> Click on update button

18. 

21.     Use option 1 that is update installer for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 if you already have AX 2012 R3 installed

22.     Verify that you have appropriate permissions. To run the Update installer, you must have administrator rights on the local computer and System Administrator rights in Microsoft Dynamics AX. 

23.     To install application hotfixes, you must have the following additional rights in Microsoft SQL Server:

-          You are a member of the Securityadmin server role on the SQL Server instance.

-          You are assigned to the db_owner role in the model database.

24.     Run AXupdate.exe

Tip – Suggest you to save the package (axupdate.exe) and hence need not go through the download option again and again.

25.     Run Axupdate.exe and update the binary and application fixes

26.     While doing the binary updates, if you encounter the below CLR error for SQL Server 2012, make sure you download it from the below website

               

http://www.microsoft.com/en-AU/download/details.aspx?id=29065

27.     Also you would need to install Report Viewer Control as it’s one of the pre-requisite for Binary Updates

28.     Run Intitialize-AXModelStore \

PS C:\Windows\system32> Initialize-AXModelStore -Database <DatabaseName> -Se

rver <ServerName>

Model store schema successfully created.

29.     Restart AOS

30.     Run the software update checklist from AX

31.     Do Full compile via axbuild.exe (Will save you some time!)

32.     Make sure to check the AX Log and fix all  compilation errors before you head on to the next step

33.     Do CIL Compile

34.     Resolve the compilation errors before running data upgrade

35.     Run through data upgrade checklist

36.     Run the axupdate.exe on the report server as well to update report components

Appendix 

Axbuild.exe (syntax below)

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Server\AX2012PROD\bin>axbuild.exe xppcompileall /s=02 /altbin="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Client\Bin"

If you are getting CIL Compile Errors, that means go and check the normal Compile App log, and fix all the errors which you find there and then do a CIL Compile again to make it success

SSRS Upgrade

To upgrade SSRS components of AX, Run AXupdate.exe from the SSRS instance box

Client Upgrade

To upgrade Client components and Office Add-in, run axupdate.exe from where the client is installed.

For me, the office-add ins were not getting successfully installed at the first time and hence my client installation was not successful, and in order to fix it, I had to uninstall the previous R3 client, reboot the system, make sure the client/bin folder is not there, reinstall R3 client and then run axupdate.exe – this time it was successful

AIF Upgrade

If AIF and IIS are on different boxes, then make sure to run axupdate.exe from that box

Install Visual Studio 2013 Developer tools

In order to install VS 2013, you would need to first uninstall VS 2010 developer components by running AX2012 R3 Setup/installer and then reboot and install VS 2013 Developer tools. (Before installing VS 2013 Developer tools, you need to have full VS 2013 Installed – In my case, I have premium version of VS 2013)

This blog helped me here http://organicax.com/2014/12/09/visual-studio-2010-message-on-applying-cu8-to-ax2012-r3/

To uninstall VS 2010 Developer tools Run Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Installer > remove component