AX 2012 Data Migration Framework (beta) Installation

In this post, I would like to shed some light on the Data Migration Framework recently published by Microsoft as beta. I will start with installation and configuration of the tool and later would like to share the experience of using the tool using development environment.

Open up the installation wizard using Setup.exe file that comes up with the tool.

As I am installing the tool on development machine, I have selected both Client and Server components. If you have AOS on different server and client on another, you will have to install the components separately on respective machines.

Select the file location where the setup has to put the files. I will leave it as default selected.

The installation wizard is now completed and setup log file is opened. Good to take a look at the setup log file at the end.

Now you have to update the buffer size in AOS configuration utility. The reason mentioned by MS is that the staging table (for corresponding target entity) used by the tool is highly normalized and the migration process takes extra processing capacity, so recommended to have the buffer size increased from default 24K to 48K. Please do remember to revert it back to 24K after the data migration is done.

After the AOS is restarted, you will have to import the model file (DataMigrationFramework.axmodel) found in “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Data Migration Framework (Beta)” to target AX 2012. I will use AX 2012 Management Shell to import the file:

As recommended, restart the AOS. Open AX 2012 client and you will be presented with a checklist as we just imported a new model into model store. Again as suggested by AxUtil, we will select the option of “Compile and synchronize” from the checklist and click OK. This will take some time, so have a cup of tea until it gets finished (I had my lunch thoughJ).

After the compile and synchronize is completed, you should see a new module in AX named “Data migration framework”. In my next post, I will take a sample scenario to start configuring the framework and use it to import some data from a source system.