Installing multiple Instances/DB | Dynamics NAV | on a single Machine | For Beginners

Hello Folks,

I recently felt many of my clients(technical team) are facing problem understanding the process involved in creating multiple instances of databases. Generally in every server we have a TEST DB and a LIVE DB(there can be more depending on the nature and stage of project). Inside every DB there can be as many Company as the system can hold.

For technical personnel, the main concern is how to maintain two databases, one for testing Objects sent from the Developers and then after successful testing can be transferred to the Live DB for final level testing... Generally all the objects are kept similar between Test and Live DB(may not be the case always).

You can always find these technical details on www.msdn.microsoft.com in details but in most of the cases i have seen, users feel uncomfortable reading all those walk-through and most of them prefer either video tutorial or the blogs with images.

STEPS...
I am assuming Version 2016 since i'll be attaching snaps of version 2016.
Let us assume we already have LIVE DB. It has Instance Named "DynamicsNAV90", which is the default name...
The ports used by DynamicsNAV90 are:
Client Services: 7056
SOAP Services: 7057
OData Services: 7058
Management Services: 7055 

Now lets replicate the Database. We can do this from SQL Server Management Studio.
I'll not go in details since this is all normal steps...

Now lets assume we have a New Database named "Demo Database NAV (9-0)_new"...

Now lets create a New Instance from "Dynamics NAV 2016 Administration", Lets right click on Console Root/Microsoft Dynamics NAV(Local) and click on Add Instance.

It will populate a new window where we are supposed to enter the server name and different ports. Lets use different port since we don't want port conflict issue and this is the main part, since we are assigning totally different port to a new instance they will be totally independent entity and they can run independently. Lets now assign the Database we just created "Demo Database NAV (9-0)_new" to this instance(ForTestDB is our new Instance).

New Instance Name: ForTestDB
Client Services: 5060
SOAP Services: 5061
OData Services: 5062
Management Services: 5059
(you can choose any available Ports, just keep the port number together and in the same range, it helps you remember the ports)

Now lets go to Services(go to RUN(win +R) and enter Services.msc and press enter) and confirm that both the services are running(see the snapshot).

Now we are all configured. We just need to go to Development environment and check the Database information and confirm the Server Instance has a value in General section.

Now lets run RTC. First Client will run automatically since it was working before. Now let open RTC again(keep previous RTC open) in the left side we have a Down arrow icon click on it and select "Select Server". Here we will have to enter the Server Address manually. the format of Server address is :"localhost:"ClientServiceport"/InstanceName" so in my case it is "localhost"5060/ForTestDB".

Here you go, you have two NAV RTC running on the same machine. You can follow the same step to install and run as many NAV system on your machine as your system can. This also works for other versions and inter-version installation...

#thankYou