Cloud migration prerequisites for Business Central
This article outlines requirements on the Business Central on-premises and online environments for cloud migration. Review this information before you start the cloud migration.
Destination online environment
Customer has a Business Central online tenant
At least one user has SUPER permissions in the target company in Business Central online.
Users assigned with SUPER permissions are the only users who can make changes in Business Central online target company. Users who don't have SUPER permissions are automatically reassigned to the intelligent cloud user group, which limits them to read-only access to data. For more information, see Working with environments during cloud migration.
If you're the person setting up and running the cloud migration, you must have SUPER permissions in Business Central and admin role in Microsoft admin center. If you'll be running cloud migration as a delegated admin, a Business Central user with SUPER permissions has to grant you permission. The permission is granted when you try to run the Cloud Migration Setup. For more information, see About delegated administrators.
Install the Business Central migration apps
In the Business Central administration center, open the environment that you intend to migrate your data to, and then choose the Apps action. Make sure that these apps have the latest updates installed:
- Intelligent Cloud Base
- Business Central Intelligent Cloud
Important
In Business Central online, install, publish, or upgrade the Intelligent Cloud Base extension first, and then the product-specific extension or extensions.
If you're migrating from an earlier supported version of Business Central, you must also make sure that the following apps are updated:
- Business Central Cloud Migration – Previous Release
- Business Central Cloud Migration – Previous Release [code for your country-specific version]
Also, at the end of the upgrade, you must make sure that the
applicationVersionfield in thendo$tenantdatabasepropertytable is set to the right version. If the field is blank, or if it's set to an older version than the migration tool supports, the migration can't run. For more information, see Post-upgrade tasks.
Install customization extensions
If the on-premises database includes data owned by an extension, and you want the data migrated, then install the extension on the online tenant. Also, make sure that each extension includes at least one permission set the gives at access.
Source on-premises environment
Business Central version is a supported migration path.
If the solution is based on an older version of the on-premises product, upgrade to supported version.
Database
The database can be hosted on SQL Server or Azure SQL Database.
An SQL Server database must meet the following requirements:
Uses SQL Server 2016 SP1 or later
Compatibility level set to 130 or higher
TCP/IP is enabled. For more information, see Enable or Disable a Server Network Protocol in the SQL Server documentation.
Configured for SQL Server authentication.
Important
The login account used for SQL server authentication must have the sysadmin role on the server level and db_owner role on the database level.
For more information, see Configure SQL Server authentication on the database.
Other
Self-hosted integration runtime machine (local on-premises database only; not Azure Database Server)
The computer from which you'll run the cloud migration and self-hosted integration runtime should meet the requirements described at Create and configure a self-hosted integration runtime.