Install multiple roles of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 from the command line

I finally had a chance to give installing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 using the command line a go yesterday and I must say it wasn't plain sailing. One of the reasons was that we weren't doing a complete installation, which coupled with Microsoft deficient documentation resulted in a bit of grief.

We installed all front end roles and the deployment roles apart from the tools because the documentation is incorrect, it says the role name should be DeploymentManagerTool but in actual fact the role name is DeploymentTools, which meant that it uninstalled MS Dynamics CRM the second time we tried as it did not recognize the role, so it assumed that we wanted to uninstall.

Also, for some reason the documentation, see here, surrounds the value for the reboot clause with quotes, e.g. "true" which is wrong.

If you edit the configuration file with notepad, make sure that you save it as unicode, you can check this by opening the configuration file with Internet Explorer. If it opens it, then you are OK. Otherwise, open the file with notepad and ensure that it is save as unicode, see below:

For some reason, the Windows Process Activation Service was disabled in our servers, so we enabled it ( It was preventing IIS from starting halfway through the install).

The command to install from the command line is as follows

setupserver.exe /QR /L c:\logs\log.log /config c:\configfile.xml

We used two different config files, one for the Front End Server and Deployment and the another one for the Back End Server. The former was deployed first and the latter second on different servers. 

A few things to bear in mind:

• The License key is the evaluation license
• I think that the Reporting URL tag is not needed.
• On the back end configuration database creation is set to false as this was created during Front end install.

Front End Server and Deployment configuration file:

  <CRMSetup>
  <Server>
  <Patch update="false" />
  <!--Evaluation License Key 90 Days 12/07/2012-->
  <LicenseKey>MQM2H-JYYRB-RRD6J-8WBBC-CVBD3</LicenseKey>
  <SqlServer>TEST008</SqlServer>
  <Database create="true"/>
  <Reporting URL="http://TEST008/ReportServer"/>
  <OU>OU=PSW,DC=CU,DC=ORG</OU>
  <InstallDir>C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM</InstallDir>
  
  <!--CRM Server Roles-->
  <Roles>
  <Role name="WebApplicationServer"/>
  <Role name="DeploymentWebService"/>
  <Role name="DiscoveryWebService"/>
  <Role name="OrganizationWebService"/>
  <Role name="HelpServer"/>
  <Role name="DeploymentTools"/>
  </Roles>
  
  <CrmServiceAccount type="DomainUser">
  <ServiceAccountLogin>cu\psw_svc</ServiceAccountLogin>
  <ServiceAccountPassword>P@ssw0rd123</ServiceAccountPassword>
  </CrmServiceAccount>
  
  <DeploymentServiceAccount type="DomainUser">
  <ServiceAccountLogin>cu\psw_svc</ServiceAccountLogin>
  <ServiceAccountPassword>P@ssw0rd123</ServiceAccountPassword>
  </DeploymentServiceAccount>
  
  <SQM optin="false"/>
  <muoptin optin="false"/>
  
  <Reboot>true</Reboot>
  </Server>
  </CRMSetup>

And the Back End Server configuration file:

 <CRMSetup>
 <Server>
 <Patch update="false" />
 <!--Evaluation License Key 90 Days 12/07/2012-->
 <LicenseKey>MQM2H-JYYRB-RRD6J-8WBBC-CVBD3</LicenseKey>
 <SqlServer>TEST008</SqlServer>
 <Database create="false"/>
 <Reporting URL="http://TEST008/ReportServer"/>
 <OU>OU=PSW,DC=CU,DC=ORG</OU>
 <InstallDir>C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM</InstallDir>
 
 <!--CRM Server Roles-->
 <Roles>
 <Role name="AsynchronousProcessingService"/>
 <Role name="SandboxProcessingService"/>
 </Roles>
 
 <CrmServiceAccount type="DomainUser">
 <ServiceAccountLogin>cu\psw_svc</ServiceAccountLogin>
 <ServiceAccountPassword>P@ssw0rd123</ServiceAccountPassword>
 </CrmServiceAccount>
 
 <DeploymentServiceAccount type="DomainUser">
 <ServiceAccountLogin>cu\psw_svc</ServiceAccountLogin>
 <ServiceAccountPassword>P@ssw0rd123</ServiceAccountPassword>
 </DeploymentServiceAccount>
 
 <SQM optin="false"/>
 <muoptin optin="false"/>
 
 <Reboot>true</Reboot>
 </Server>
 </CRMSetup>