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:
- Turn off the AX 2012 AOS instances.
- 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.
- 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.
- Upload the bacpac file to Azure storage.
- 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.
- 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.