Deploying a D365 Finance and SCM Demo Environment for Initial Analysis – Part 2

Posted on: May 26, 2020 | By: Guy Logan | Microsoft Dynamics AX/365

Welcome back to our two-part mini series on deploying an environment for initial analysis! In part two, we will learn the process of deploying an environment with a license, specifically in a sandbox environment. In case you missed it, read part one where we learned the benefits of deploying a demo environment and how to do so without a purchased license.

Deploying an environment with a purchased license 

Since you’ve already purchased the licenses, you should have received a link to configure a special type of project in Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle (LCS), which is an implementation project. This project will allow you to deploy a dev/test environment and a sandbox environment. The term sandbox is used to refer to a Standard or Premier Acceptance Testing (Tier 2/3) or higher environment connected to a SQL Azure database. This environment allows business users and functional team members to validate application functionality. To reduce overall time required for a successful data upgrade, it his strongly recommended to run the data upgrade process in a development environment before running it in a shared sandbox environment. It’s important to remember the key difference between the two is that a sandbox environment uses Microsoft Azure SQL Database for data storage, whereas a development environment uses Microsoft SQL Server. A backup from the AX 2012 database instance can’t just be restored to SQL Database because of the technical difference in the database layers, requiring a slightly modified data upgrade procedure in a sandbox environment. 

Before starting your upgrade in the sandbox environment, is it assumed that you have already upgraded the data in a development environment. The high-level steps in the upgrade process are as follows:  

  1. Turn off the AX 2012 AOS instances. 
  2. Create a copy of the AX 2012 database. We strongly recommend that you use a copy, because you must delete some objects in the copy that will be exported.
  3. Export the copied database to a bacpac file by using a free SQL Server tool that is named SQLPackage.exe. This tool provides a special type of database backup that can be imported into SQL Database.
  4. Upload the bacpac file to Azure storage.
  5. Download the bacpac file to the Application Object Server (AOS) machine in the sandbox environment, and then import it by using SQLPackage.exe. You must then run a script against the imported database to reset the SQL database users.
  6. Run the appropriate data upgrade package against the imported database.

If you are interested in learning more about deploying a demo environment in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Supply Chain Management, please feel free to reach out to us at info@loganconsulting.com.     

Logan Consulting is a professional services firm committed to helping businesses improve business processes to get the most from their ERP investments.