title: Improve Dynamics CRM Solution Import Speed
body: <p>Our Dynamics CRM Solution is quite large, and it takes between 20 to 25 minutes to complete an import on our servers.</p>
  
  <p>While testing the import process on a Dynamics CRM hosting provider, the import took significantly less time, around 8 minutes.</p>
  
  <p>In an attempt to see if hardware can improve the import speed, I've setup a virtual machine with Dynamics CRM in VMware Workstation 8. The VM is on an SSD, 4 cores (from a 6 core i7-3930K), and has 12 GB RAM. It still took around 20 minutes. I tried SQL 2008 R2 SP2 and SQL 2012 with no noticeable difference.</p>
  
  <p>How can I improve the import speed software-wise? Is there any information available that goes into detail on what the import process does, so we can optimize around those variables?</p>
  
  <p>The solution contains 60+ entities, customizations to 40+ system entities, plugins, ribbon buttons, sitemap changes, processing steps, and a few hundred web resources. It's currently a little over 6MB.</p>
  
  <p>Also, how can I know what hardware component is the biggest bottleneck for the import process? Perfmon showed the SSD idling away most of the import process, RAM was at 6.5 GB, only the processor showed relatively higher use, but not more than 30%-40%. Or, is VMware Workstation itself the bottleneck, and dedicated hardware, or ESX/Hyper-V, will improve this?</p>