If you are British and a keen Dynamics CRM/Dynamics 365 for Enterprise (CRM/D365E) fan, then May 4th, 2017 was a proud day to be both. This is because Microsoft announced the general availability of UK hosted D365E instances. UK-based Office 365 customers who configure a new D365E subscription will have their instance(s) hosted within the UK, using the brand new crm11 URL identifier. This is line with the launch of 2 Azure Data Centre regions within the UK last year and represents an important development in the evolution of Microsoft’s cloud services within the UK.
For the “old fogies” (like me!), previously all CRM/D365E tenants in the UK were hosted by default within the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. The data centres for these locations are hosted within Amsterdam and Dublin, areas that are within the European Union and somewhat local to the UK. Those with tenants within this region may now be asking whether it is possible to move their existing instances to the UK. The reasons for this may be straightforward, complex or oddly patriotic in nature - ranging from data residency requirements through to the desire of being a proud Brit with a wholly British D365E instance 🙂 In this week’s post, we’ll take a look at whether it is possible to currently migrate an existing non-UK based tenant into the UK via the various options at our disposal.
For those who do not wish to read ahead, here’s the TL;DR version…
No, it is not currently possible to migrate your CRM/D365E instance to the UK – either via a support request to Microsoft or via the Backup/Restore feature within the Administration Centre.
If you have decided to stick around, then let’s take a closer look at the two avenues potentially at our disposal for migrating a CRM/D365E instance: A Microsoft Support Request and the Backup/Restore Feature.
Asking Microsoft Directly: What did they say?
Microsoft supports the ability for businesses to a move their CRM/D365E instance to an entirely different region. This is all handily summarised as part of a TechNet article:
The Geo Migration feature for Dynamics 365 (online) will allow customers to move their instances in a single tenant from one region to another.
I was recently involved as part of a support request with Microsoft, in which we asked the question whether it is possible to migrate an EMEA D365E instance to the UK. We were told that it is not currently possible to do this, with the following response given:
The data residency option, and the availability to move customer data into the new region, is not a default for every new region we launch. As we expand into new regions in the future, we’ll evaluate the availability and the conditions of data moves on a region by region basis.
No specific timeframes on when (if ever) this type of Geo Migration would be made available when this was queried with Microsoft. However, I would posit its likeliness for the near future, given that you can currently request the very same for your Office 365 tenant. At the time of writing (June 2017), however, the Geo Migration option is not viable for migrating your CRM/D365E instance across to the UK.
Backup and Restore: The Saviour of the Hour?
The ability to backup and restore your CRM/D365E Online instance(s) was a much welcome feature when it was introduced last year. Microsoft frequently performs backups of your instance(s), to provide sufficient disaster recovery potential on their end. These backups are exposed to Administrators via the Administration Centre, as well as the ability to generate your own backups at any time. These can then be restored into a spare Sandbox instance for testing/development. The key thing to remember with this feature is that it is limited to Online backup/restore only. You cannot, for example, download a copy of the SQL Server backup file and then use this as part of an On-Premise install.
You may be thinking at this stage this feature would allow us to get around the above issue by taking a backup of your non-crm11 existing organisation and restoring to your crm11 instance. Unfortunately, this is not possible, either via the Administration Centre or through logging a ticket with Microsoft. This is very likely due to the fact that different regions have different Administration Centres, with all of the functionality within that (backup/restore, administrative settings and update management) contained for instances within that specific region.
This can be confirmed by taking a look at the URL. When you are within the EMEA region, for example, the URL looks like this:
https://port.crm4.dynamics.com/G/Instances/InstancePicker.aspx
Whereas for the Great Britain (GBR) region its:
https://port.crm11.dynamics.com/G/Instances/InstancePicker.aspx
Businesses that have multiple instances across different regions are classed as “multi-tenanted” by Microsoft, and you have the ability to switch your region and access desired functionality from within the Administration Centre:
Going back to the above point re. functionality being “containerised”, this can be confirmed by accessing the properties of a crm11 instance whilst within the crm4 Administration Centre:
Our options to Edit, Reset, Copy etc. the instance are non-existent; to make them appear, you have to open the Administration Centre for the GBR region.
So why is all of this so important?
When speaking with customers regarding new IT Projects, the question of data location is one that is almost always raised. Whereas in the past, organisations would choose to host their entire IT infrastructure on-premise, the rise of cloud computing has meant it is generally more cost-effective to migrate infrastructure into a data centre or a SaaS provider, such as Microsoft. Whilst these solutions generally tick all of the boxes from a resiliency, performance etc. standpoint, the awkward tick box - the actual, physical location of the data itself - is more difficult to extrapolate. An organisation such as Microsoft, for example, has data centres all over the globe, leading to the potential of data leaving particular jurisdictions and some potentially controversial realities, such as the implication of the US Patriot Act on data that Microsoft holds. As a business, you may be required by local law to ensure that data is stored within the current jurisdiction, within the European Economic Area (EEA) and even be required to literally identify the server rack on which a particular database/system is hosted on. With this in mind, one barrier for adoption of CRM/D365E in the UK could be the question over data residency. There are also other performance considerations that arise from the location of your CRM/D365E instance. It is entirely feasible that connections to a UK hosted tenant will be faster compared to connecting to a tenant based in Europe, the US or anywhere else in the world. Administrators who may be attempting to identify ways in which their instance can run optimally may, therefore, benefit from having their CRM/D365E instance hosted in the UK.
Finding an Interim Workaround
For businesses who have strict, data residency requirements that could have serious legal implications, the situation is currently not ideal if they currently use CRM/D365E. In terms of finding a workaround until Microsoft support geo-to-geo migrations for UK regions, customisation components can be straightforwardly migrated via solutions, but other instance-specific settings/data could take a significant amount of time to move across. There are tools out there that can help in this:
- Use KingswaySoft’s Dynamics 365 SSIS Integration Toolkit to create a .dtsx package to migrate all of the required data to a newly provisioned instance.
- Utilise Scribe Online to configure a D365E to D365E one-time replication job.
- Migrate the data using the applications built-in tools and Configuration Migration Tool, available within the SDK.
There is, fortunately, a way forward for the desperate, but the steps involved need to be carefully planned out in advance to ensure that no issues are encountered. For example, if you have recurring Workflows in your old environment, how do you migrate these across and ensure they are restarted correctly? I would envision that Microsoft will very soon offer the ability to migrate into the UK region, so it may end up being more prudent to hold off until this is announced and generally available.