Microsoft CRM Small Business Edition - Architecture Question
I am preparing to install Microsoft CRM Small Business Edition into my SBS 2003
Premium domain, ISA 2004 installed but SQL 2000 is not as yet.
I have another member server, which runs virtual server 2005 and hosts
a second DC, this helps in a redundancy situation in that I have my AD
database ready for use if I need to rebuild my SBS domain.
My question is in connection with the architecture for Microsoft CRM Small
Business Edition. If I install SQL 2000 SP4 on the SBS box and CRM on
the member server, which may need a ram boost, is that the best
approach for performance, i.e. are the requests going from the clients
to the CRM box back to the SBS box for Exchange queries and then back
to the CRM box and then back to the client.
I am always reluctant to load the whole world onto the SBS box and
thus have a member server as above, which also runs WSUS and MOM 2005
Workgroup edition. However, could someone give me some thoughts on
whether it might be more efficient to run the CRM app on the SBS box.
I regular take images of both boxes on external USB 2.0 drives, which
are also backed up with Veritas 10.0.
Any thoughts on the architectural issues very welcome.
i have SBS2003 and CRM but i am not using ISA, so my situation is a bit
different as ISA takes more resources. Of course if you have the servers
available the best thing is to spread them out. Not sure how many users you
have i am monitoring server utilization from the integrated SBS reports
feature and i am hardly using any resources. The only time i realize a
significant slowdown is when shutting down or booting up, stopping and
starting all those services is a slow process indeed :)
I am running a new P4 Dual 400 box with 2GB of RAM and i am very satisfied
with the server utilization reports. I am hardly denting the resources and
the server response time is nice. Better than some 2000 Server boxes i have
had running Exchange 5.5.
I like CRM but it is not a very user friendly app, for instance after you
add a user to CRM there is no easy way to change thier permissions or delete
them, at least from what i can see with the utilities that came with it. So
far so good, you may want to check out the white paper from ms on installing
CRM:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/mscrm/mscrm12/default.mspx
i would like to hear if you encounter any issues, might want to post this to
the crm newsgroup as well.