A quick peek into the new Dynamics AX 7 Virtual Machine and restarting the new AOS Web App from IIS

Dear Friends,

Wish you all a Very Happy New Year and Hope you had a rocking start to 2016!

A few weeks ago, I posted the steps to provision a Dynamics AX 7 Environment on Azure here.

Few days back, I got a chance to  explore the new AX 7 Virtual Machine and thought to share some interesting findings with you.

AX 7 Virtual Machine Configuration:

It's a pretty powerful machine built on Windows Server 2012 64-bit having 56GB RAM and running on 8 cores.

Key Tools/Software included in the box:

Visual Studio 2015  (for AX Development)

SQL Server 2016 

Office 2013 

  

Dynamics AX Server Configuration:

Things have changed on how the AOS Server Configuration is managed. In previous versions of AX, AOS Service was managed as a windows service and we had a Server Configuration Utility under Control Panel to configure and manage AOS instances.

Now with AX 7, All AOS Configurations are stored in IIS

Location of AX 7 packages, source code, and other AOS configurations:

On a Dynamics ‘AX 7’ VM, you can find most of the Dynamics ‘AX 7’ application configuration by opening the web.config file of the AOS Web app. 

1. Open Internet Information Service (IIS). 

2. Go to Sites > AOSService. 

3. Right-click and select Explore, this will open File explorer. 

4. Find the web.config file and open it in Notepad (or another text editor). 

Web config Path inside Virtual Machine - I:\AosService\WebRoot\web.config 

The following keys are of interest to many developers and administrators: 

Aos.MetadataDirectory – This key points to the location of the ‘AX 7’ packages folder that contains ‘AX 7’ platform and application binaries as well as source code (Source code is only available on development environments.) 

Path to packages in the VM - I:\AosService\PackagesLocalDirectory. 

Aos.AppRoot – This key points to the root folder of the AOS web application. 

DataAccess.Database – This key holds the name of the Dynamics AX 7 database. 

Infrastructure.HostURL - This key holds the Host URL for AX 7

Restarting AOS Web App

If you simply want to restart the AOS (without redeploying), run iisreset from an Administrator command prompt or restart the AosService Web App from Internet Information Services (IIS). 

 

Wiki Reference - https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/access-microsoft-dynamics-ax-7-instances-2/   

80730AE Course Development Basics in Microsoft Dynamics AX 7 - Dev 1

Greetings All!

Microsoft has released the courseware for Development Basics in Dynamics AX 7. You  will need to login to Dynamics Training Portal using your PartnerSource Id

Course Link -Dynamics AX 7 Dev 1 Course

WHAT ARE THE GOALS FOR THIS COURSE?

• Introduce Visual Studio development environment and architecture.

• Create and customize elements.

• Create tables and define relationships.

• Create forms, assign form patterns, and menus.

• Develop X++ code.

• Configure basic security.

• Introduce advanced topics.

• Configure the development environment.

• Define terminology and concepts.

• Demonstrate basic navigation.

• Create projects, models and packages.

• Create and use elements.

• Building elements.

• Describe the elements included in the application stack.

• Review the server architecture.

• Explain the cloud architecture used with Dynamics AX.

Steps and Tips to Deploy the new Dynamics AX 7 Environment on Azure

Greetings All!

I'm so excited to share the news that Microsoft has released a public preview of the new Microsoft Dynamics AX aka "AX 7". What a journey and transformation it has been for the product - from the then called Navision Axapta 2.5 version to the New Dynamics AX 7. It's just amazing!

I just finished deploying a brand new Dynamics AX environment and thought to share some tips and hints which I learned on the way.

This wiki site link shows you the steps to deploy a new dynamics ax environment on Azure, so I won't be going through the screenshots. However, I will be listing out the steps and sharing some interesting tips.

Pre-Requisites:

Azure Subscription required (Microsoft offers a free trial for those who don't have an existing subscription). Please check this link - Free Azure Trial

Deployment Steps:

a. Firstly, you will need to login to PartnerSource or CustomerSource and then there's a section on "How to access Dynamics AX"

How to access Microsoft Dynamics AX

The organization administrator should click HERE to obtain the Microsoft Dynamics AX CTP8 offer.  

You will need to click on the "HERE" link which will take you to Office 365 page where you will need to sign-in with a new Office 365 account. I tried with my existing Office 365 account but it doesn't take me in.

b. Next is the Add Users Section . You can ignore it if you are the only one going to access the Dynamics AX 7 environment as an Admin. 

c. Staying in Office 365 portal window, you can click on Dynamics Rainier Preview which will launch the Lifecycle services

d. Once you are in LifeCycle Services, you can now go ahead and deploy Dynamics AX 7 environment, before you that you will need to add a new Azure environment. At this stage, you can use your existing Azure subscription id or your new Azure id. Follow the steps mentioned in the "Deploy Dynamics AX 7 Environments Section"  in the above link.

e. Once you reach Step 4 where you need to upload the management certificate back to Azure portal, make sure you stay in the classic portal https://manage.windowsazure.com/ because that will help you with uploading the management certificates back to Azure portal. The new Azure portal uses service principals concept which will not help us with this deployment.

f. Now once you have added the subscription id and management certificate upload as per the steps, you are ready to deploy Dynamics AX 7 on the cloud. Go ahead and deploy it.

Select the region which is closest to you, In my case I live in Melbourne so I chose Australia South East that is closest Azure Data center to me.

I have gone with the default D3 plan. It took around 4 hours for me to get the new Dynamics AX deployed on Azure.

Once it's deployed, then you will get the details from Lifecycle Services (see the above dashboard), where you can log on to Dynamics AX 7. Also you have an option to download the rdp and log on to the Demo box.

Enjoy!