Since begin of August, I’ve tried to research what are the minimum system requirements for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016. First I’ve published one post about it, but I’ve deleted it. It wasn’t completed. Now, I have the freshest tested information and I hope everything will be fine in the production, as well.
In this process I’ve checked only NAV and Web Server and Windows Client requirements. You can find all my conclusions in following text. But you must to know, there are not officially requirements; these requirements are based only on my testing.
Supported Operating Systems (Server and Windows Client)
First, NAV Sever works only on 64-bit edition of operating systems. I’ve concluded that these OS are completely qualified as base for NAV and Web Server:
- Windows Server 2008 R2
- Windows Server 2012
- Windows Server 2012 R2
- Windows Server 2016 (Technical Preview 3)
- Windows 7
- Windows 8
- Windows 8.1
- Windows 10
You can see I’ve also checked installation on next Windows Server release – Windows Server 2016 (Technical Preview 3) and everything was working fine.
Older OS as Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 also require some additional software as Windows PowerShell 3.0. You can download Windows PowerShell 3.0 as part of Windows Management Framework 3.0.
Also, all these operating systems require enabled Windows Search. If this is not enabled on your server, you can do it adding new Windows Search role in Server Manager.
If you want to run Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 Windows Client, you can do it on the same operating systems, but you can do it on both of them, 64-bit or 32-bit editions. If you install Windows Client on some of the 64-bit edition OS’s, you will get two Windows Clients (32-bit and 64-bit); 64-bit will be by default, but you can change default client as well. But if you install on 32-bit OS edition, you will get only 32-bit Windows Client. I will explain more about it in new post.
SQL Servers
The same situation is as for OS, SQL Servers also require 64-bit editions only. You can use NAV 2016 on following SQL Servers:
- Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (SQL Server 2008 R2 is out of mainstream support, but I’ve tested NAV 2016 and in my tests everything was fine; but I think we have to make more tests in any case)
- Microsoft SQL Server 2012
- Microsoft SQL Server 2014
- Microsoft SQL Server 2016 CTP2.2
- Azure SQL Server
You can see that I also check installation on next SQL release – Microsoft SQL Server 2016 CTP2.2 and everything was working fine. This will be helpful in the future with information about new Windows Server.
About using NAV 2016 on Azure SQL, I have to say much more. It is a really good news and I will write a new post only about it.
Hardware sizing
All of these configuration I’ve checked, have worked with minimum 1,75GB RAM.
REMARK:
As I already said, these are not officially Microsoft system requirements. These are information based on my personal testing and they will maybe be different in officially release.
hi,
when you said : you’ve tested with mentioned parameters , and it was working ok.
what will hapend if simultanes 10 users are useing the system.
what about the OS – how many RAM in general are needed
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Hi
As I said, this is a minimum of requirement and everything works fine. I cannot say you what to do for 10 users. It depends what they actually works in NAV. You can find a few videos about load tests and this is only way to know what memories and other resources you need.
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Windows 2008 is not mentioned in the official Server requirements in NAV 2016. However it was supported for NAV 2015. Any comments on this?, as your post states it’s working correctly, why did Microsoft decide to discontinue support??
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd301054(v=nav.90).aspx#NavServerReqs
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I already said that this is not an official system requirements, this is only my experience based on my tests. I tested it on Windows Server 2008 R2 and it worked, but I suppose that Microsoft has some reason for this discounting.
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[…] In my few articles, I’ve already wrote about Phone Client in NAV 2016 and how to install it on own smartphone with self-signed certificate. Also, I already wrote about NAV 2016 system requirements. […]
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Thanks for testing this configuration.
You said that you tested NAV 2016 on SQL Server 2008 R2, but when I tried to restore the .bak of the demo database in SQL 2008 R2, and I got the usual error because the .bak is for SQL 2012 or 2014.
There are some posts that mention various options:
Generate Scripts
SQL Server Integration Services (Transfer Database Task)
Custom Scripting and BCP or Import/Export Wizard
How did you get the demo database into SQL 2008 R2?
Thanks
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Regarding the question I posted yesterday, I found a solution by using the Copy Database Task in SQL, to copy the NAV 2016 database from SQL 2012 to SQL 2008 R2.
It was quite straightforward, so long as you have two SQL Servers on the same network.
Regards
Alastair
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While installing NAV 2016 I am getting an error “Microsoft Dynamics NAV cannot be installed on this operating system.”
I am using Windows 7 and tried with both Ultimate and professional version. Then installed .net framwork, visual studio etc from “Prerequisite Components” folder. Still getting same error. Can you please help me to install NAV 2016.
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