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Microsoft Dynamics AX (Archived)
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Build Environments: D365FinOps vs Retail

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Posted on by 339

Hello All,
We are working on both D365 for Retail and D365FinOps projects.

It appears that the recommendations/best practices I've heard about using the included Tier 1 environment as a build machine don't hold for Retail due to the additional requirements to make the Retail SDK work. There is a developer topology package you need to install for example, and you cannot install that on an environment defined as Build using deployable packages.

Recommendations from: docs.microsoft.com/.../new-environments-visual-studio-teams-branch-retail-projects
"Use the LCS portal to deploy a new build environment. We recommend that you use a cloud-hosted environment, because you will have more options and capabilities if you have administrative rights."

From the same article earlier on:

"One environment is included in the subscription. We recommend that you use this environment as a build environment."

which seems to be a contradiction, I guess they must have lifted the FinOps recommendations and altered for Retail but missed that.

The suggestion to use Cloud hosted seems a workaround to the enforced 'no-admin' on subscription environments, I do not like having different hosting methods/setup for Retail vs FinOps when the workaround of using cloud hosted is purely to address something Microsoft enforce but haven't considered every eventuality. Interested to hear general thoughts and other approaches to Build environments, and whether anyone has formally raised this with Microsoft?

My intention was to almost always use Tier 1 subscription environment as a Build environment in D365 Retail or FinOps projects as this was the strong lead I got from Technical Summit and others, but if we're stuck with these limitations I will likely change to all Build environments are Cloud-hosted for consistency between projects.

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  • nmaenpaa Profile Picture
    101,172 Moderator on at

    To me this seems quite clear. Usually you should use the Tier 1 environment as a build server. Simply because it's very convenient. With retail it's apparently not possible, so you need to use a cloud hosted or local build VM. So retail is exception to the general "rule" / recommendation.

    Technically it doesn't matter where the build environment is hosted. So you are free to do as you please. Anyway the Tier 1 is not very good for development, either, because of the lack of admin access. So if you don't use that for build purposes on your non-retail customers, you are simply wasting one environment. On the other hand, if you want to debug the sandbox database, it can be done only from Tier 1 environment (hosted by MS). Not from cloud hosted environments. So there might be a valid reason for having one Tier 1 dev machine as well. Without it, you have to manually copy the sandbox database to your dev machine in order to be able to debug it. And this makes some urgent production data debugging scenarios a bit slower to do.

  • Chris R Tilley Profile Picture
    339 on at

    That is kind of my point though, shouldn't Microsoft be working towards consistency to eliminate the need for the exception?  It is clear, but it is not consistent and it could be.

    I agree with your other points, but for me they add a bit more weight to the 'it should be possible to use Tier 1 for Build in Retail too", I feel.

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