Tip #386: The fastest way to provision new organization

For people who complain that they provision CRM organizations daily, hourly, weekly and cannot relax for 5 minutes while new organization is being created, here the quickest way to provision new CRM on-premises organizations:

One-off preparations

1. Go through the pain one last time and watch the paint dry while creating a new organization (name it, say, template).
2. Delete the organization.
3. In SQL Server Manager, optionally shrink the database template_mscrm, then detach it.
4. Find .ldf file, delete it. Find .mdf file, set it aside

Create new organization

1. Copy the template_mscrm.mdf into your SQL Server data directory, rename it.
2. Attach the database. Remove missing .ldf file, system will recreate it for you.
3. Adjust mdf and log file sizes as per David’s advice above.
4. In CRM Deployment Manager start the import and use that database.
5. 5 seconds later you’ll have your new organization.

Don’t forget to repeat preparations after applying update rollup to the deployment.

If you do, indeed, provision organizations frequently, consider automating the process using Adxstudio ALM Toolkit.