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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Finance | Project Operations, Human Resources, ... / Development environmen...
Finance | Project Operations, Human Resources, ...
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Development environment speed VM vs Azure

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Posted on by Valdek 10

Hello All,

I work for customer implementing D365 FO. We have dev boxes deployed via LCS sitting on Azure.

The speed of dev boxes we have is rather slow, or actually very slow when comparing to AX 2009 dev experience.

Is there anything one can do to make it really nice, fast and smooth? Would having a development VM on a 16 core/32 threads modern desktop computer with 32 GB/ram help to have really nice experience?

I'm only working with D365 FO for about 6 months, but I must say I complain a lot about build/synchronise/test speed. When doing xds policies, few clicks to change xds query, then build/sychronise open browser to test was taking 10-12 mintes for a round. 10-15-20 rounds like this made me wait few hours daily. Click - wait - click - wait even longer - click wait. Thats my development process 

Can anyone suggest what to do, what not to do to make things much faster?

Thank you.

Kind regards

Waldek

I have the same question (0)
  • Verified answer
    André Arnaud de Calavon Profile Picture
    André Arnaud de Cal... 301,146 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

    Hi Waldek,

    Memory and disk speed will make a difference in performance. For sure you would notice differences if you would go for a VM size having premium storage. However, this also comes with a price. Next to this, you can also disable some services, like the Batch and Data Import Export Framework services.

  • Verified answer
    Mariano Gracia Profile Picture
    Mariano Gracia on at

    First of all, developing in ax2009 is, and I'm afraid, will always be faster, you can not compare two systems that are so different, as per in my experience as developer, don't use Azure build machines (unless you're testing integrations via api with external app's), here in my company we decided to use AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8 core, m2 hdd disk and 32 gb ram, and with this machine a full synchronization takes 6 minutes, building a single project with 28 objects (tables, classes, label files, forms, queries, xds...) takes 30 seconds and to synchronize that project takes just one minute (but take in mind it highly depends on the complexity of the objects), doing the same in an Azure build machine is a headache

  • Valdek Profile Picture
    Valdek 10 on at

    Andre, Mariano, thanks for replies. I'll turn off unnecessary services and will see if this improves it a little.

    Since posting this thread on the forum I did a lot of research on this topic. It turns out we are have Azure VMs DS13v2 with 8 cores and 56GB of RAM but standard disks, and premium SSD drives would be above the budget. Someone said (on forum) 8 cores/56GB is overkill for development and it would be better and cheaper to have DS12v2 (4 cores, 28GB RAM) but with premium SSD drives.

    Any idea if that could be true? I have no way to check this myself.

    One theoretical question here: Is it possible to develop using personal machine without any special permissions from the company I work for? I'm not sure how it works technically and if it's just a matter of logging in to VS and Team explorer using company account - or is this not that simple?

    Kind regards

    Waldek

  • Verified answer
    Mariano Gracia Profile Picture
    Mariano Gracia on at

    If you have to work daily developing with the virtual machine, then Azure is much more expensive, I would recommend you to ask the IT department for a physical machine, in the end they would have to provide you with the right tools for working, regarding the permissions, you only need access to the devops project where the code is hosted, a Visual Studio professional license and access to the LCS project where the 365 environments are deployed.

  • Valdek Profile Picture
    Valdek 10 on at

    Thanks.

    Yes, sure I should get the right tools, but live is not always perfect. I have a tool (Azure VM) which I consider too slow, and I'm trying to figure out what other options may I have even including personal machine. I wish the enviornment was super fast, with short build times, short synch times to minimize wait times.

    Anyway, I've learned a lot from this research and from your comments. Thanks for all info.

  • Valdek Profile Picture
    Valdek 10 on at

    Mariano, I have one more question regarding local machines with D365FO VM for development - is this hard to manage? How are MS updates applied? Is there much additional maintenance work required around D365FO VM?

    Thanks & regards

  • Verified answer
    Mariano Gracia Profile Picture
    Mariano Gracia on at

    Maintenance isn't hard, to apply a Dynamics 365 binary update is quite easy, just a few command lines in a console, in a hour or so you will have the VM updated, I have done it several times, to work in an Azure hosted machine, compile, synchronize or debug kill my patience, this is my personal experience, may others have other opinions, but as I said, if you have to work daily with a development environment, it's worth to have a physical machine

  • Valdek Profile Picture
    Valdek 10 on at

    Thanks, good to know!  I am actually feeling the same about build/compile/test process. Discussed various options with the company, but for now azure vm is the only way to go... :(

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