Upgrading NAV2009R2 to NAV2016

Hi all,

I'm looking for the roadmap for upgrading a NAV2009R2 database to NAV2016, and have a couple of issues that I am seeking opinions on. For purposes of discussion, I'm talking only about the DATA upgrade, not the application objects (i.e. pages, reports, codeunits) upgrade.

Question 1:
The UpgradeToolkit directory on the NAV2016 CU2 DVD contains Upgrade700900.US.fob, Upgrade710900.US.fob and Upgrade800900.US.fob. I haven't seen any definitive statement, but I am assuming that I have to upgrade in 2 steps, similar to how is documented in the NAV2009->NAV2015 document, i.e. Upgrade from NAV2009R2 to NAV2013, then from NAV2013 to NAV2016

Question 2:
The database to be upgraded is nearly 400GB. Has anyone seen recommendations for the best hardware environment for doing the upgrade? I have seen comments around to do everything on a single box (i.e. application and SQL Server), with locally-attached storage. Any opinions here? What about SSD drives vs. regular hard drives? We have an enterprise-server-class environment, so I just need to tell our IT manager what we need.

Question 3:
Based on various comments, particularly about the Dimension-Ledger upgrade step, I was thinking about doing a "first-pass" data upgrade on a database with much of the history deleted and/or compressed, then do the "real" test upgrade. The reasoning here is to encounter any errors more quickly and be able to resolve them before embarking on a "many hour" upgrade.

Question 4:
The Change Log Entry table in our current database is about 60GB. Other than the physical disk space, is there any impact on leaving this table in-place? I do have the potential option of archiving 90% the Change Log entries into another table, or another separate database if necessary.

Thanks to everyone

Ron