Streamline installations are supposed to make our lives easy, that is if they are properly configured.
First question is how to make a streamline installation. These can be downloaded from https://lcs.dynamics.com
One has to create a project. It is important that it is for the correct build (RTM, retail, R2 or R3).
Next, scroll to the right on the LCS site. On the More tools plane, one can find 2 important buttons: Issue search and Update.
Issue search makes it possible to download isolated fixes (KB numbers).
The updates button allows you to download whole CU updates. When you press the Updates button, the webpage below appears.
The first option (Complete) has it all, namely an installation wizard, binaries and model store. This can also be used in case one only wants to install the binaries.
If only the binaries and the installation wizard are needed, choose the next option (Binary-only)
And finally we come to the third option (Slipstream). The Slipstream has no installation wizard. When this is extracted, one gets something as per the screenshot below:
These extracted files are to be copied to the correct place on the AX 2012 R2 RTM image. Remember to extract this image first.
When the image is extracted, one can find an Updates folder. Open this folder and create folders CU8 and myModels inside as show below:
Next copy the extracted CU8 files into the CU8 folder and copy your own models in myModels.
One would think that the slipstream installation is now up and running….. NOT!
This is strange, this is CU8, so what went wrong?
Time to check LCS….. check for CU8 or slipstream but we find no answer.
Time to log an incident on connect.microsoft.com. An update will follow….
But there is more to this, even when you have correct CU patches, one can still run in issues. It looks like the order of importing the models is wrong. Last week my model had a dependency on the upgrade model.
The dependency was correct, but seems like the size of some field on upgrade staging tables have been changed. When I slipstream this particular installation, my model is rejected because the upgrade (SYS) model is not there.
Time to log another incident…
Conclusion, don’t slipstream in both AX 2012 R2 CU8 and AX2012 R3 CU8