Deploy Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Cloud-hosted Environments on a Visual Studio Azure subscription (MSDN Subscription)

You can take advantage of your Visual Studio Azure subscription, formerly MSDN Subscription, to deploy Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Cloud-hosted Environments. It’s not a smooth process but here you have the step by step:

1. Create a new Azure Active Directory User on your MSDN subscription:

 
2. Add the Global Administrator privileges to the new Azure AD User account:

3. Add Owner or co-administrator privileges to the new Account :

4. Create Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Trial using the account that we created on step 1
   1. Go to http://aka.ms/iwlcsproject
   2. Sign in 

5. Open a new tab in the browser and enter https://lcs.dynamics.com in the address bar. This takes you to the Lifecycle Service sign-on
6. Click the Sign in button to log into Lifecycle Services.

7. Click Accept to agree to the online service agreement and privacy statement.
   
8. You have signed into Lifecycle Services with your trial account. Check the login account and ensure that it reflects the com account created earlier in Step 1.
   
9. Click the Create a Project (‘+’) icon below the Recent projects heading to create a new Lifecycle Services project.
   
10. Select the Migrate, create solutions, and learn on the What is this project for?     

11. Enter the following values on the Create a project dialog and click
    
    
    
12. Connect Lifecycle Services to your Microsoft Azure Subscription
    Add the Dynamics Deployment Services Account to your Azure Subscription

Navigate to Lifecycle Services at https://lcs.dynamics.com and sign in using the account that we created on step 1

Click on the LCS project created previously.

 Select Cloud-hosted environments from the menu next to Lifecycle Services heading.

A message prompts you to confirm that you want to Configure Azure Connector. Click Yes to be directed to the Project settings page.

Grant the Dynamics Deployment Services Account Contributor access to your Microsoft Azure subscription

 Go to the Azure portal and select subscriptions and then select the MSDN subscription

Click on Access control (IAM). Then click Add > Add role assignment.

Select Contributor as the role. Enter dynamics deployment in the Select field to search for the desired account. Select the Dynamics Deployment Services [wsfed-enabled] account from the list displayed. Notice the Dynamics Deployment Services [wsfed-enabled] account now shows up as a selected member. Click Save.

Enter your Microsoft Azure subscription details in Lifecycle Services

Go back to the LCS project

Under the AZURE CONNECTORS heading, click Add.

On the Microsoft Azure setup form, enter the required details for the Microsoft Azure subscription and click Next

Once the Dynamics Deployment Services account has been verified as a contributor in the Azure subscription, click Next.

On the Microsoft Azure setup screen, click Download to save the management certificate LifecycleServicesDeployment.cer to a local folder. Before clicking Next, we should upload the management certificate to the Microsoft Azure Portal. Leave this browser window open. We will return to it momentarily.

Go back to the Azure Portal  https://portal.azure.com 

Go to subscriptions and select the MSDN subscription

13. Under Settings, click Management certificates>Upload.

The correct subscription name should appear by default since there is only one subscription. Click on the folder button and select the LifecycleServicesDeployment.cer file downloaded and Click Upload.

Switch to the Lifecycle Services browser window to complete the Azure setup started in Step 8 and click Next. Lifecycle Services will check if the management certificate is valid. If you receive an error, retry after some time. It may take a few minutes for Lifecycle Services to validate the certificate uploaded to Azure portal.       

If the management certificate was uploaded correctly in the Azure portal, you will move to the next setup page. Select the Azure region and click Connect.

14. Deploy Finance and Operations VM

On the main project page under the Environments heading, click the Add (‘+’) button (next to Microsoft Azure settings) to add a new environment.

Select application version  and platform version 

Select environment topology.  

In the Deploy environment dialog Enter your initials followed by the date as your environment name        

Enjoy it!