Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

D365CE - Copying customization and structure from Production to a new sandbox

ENVIRONMENT:
	We have been using D365CE about 1.5 years and have found it go be quite good.

	Our previous CRM was Microsoft Dynamics 2016 onPremise

	While using D365CE, a traditional setup was used
		Name		Type
		Development	sandbox
		Playground	sandbox
		Production	production

	Our solution was:
		Developed in the DEV environment
		Tested in the PLAY environment
		Deployed in the PROD environment


PROBLEM:
	This worked well for months, until we went live.
	Once live, the size of the PLAY and PROD environments swelled until we
	routinely exceeded our assigned storage capacity.

	The temporary fix was simply delete the PLAY environment, since most of the
	development work was already done.

	This brought us back under the storage capacity limit.

	Unfortunately, the DEV environment has kept growing and contains:
		Database	2.5 GB
		File	7.8 GB
		Log	0.0 GB

	With this increase in size, we can no longer create an additional sandbox for testing,
	without exceed our storage capacity again.


	Additionally, the DEV environment has become corrupted:
		Several custom fields are missing which had been added to standard tables.
		Other fields have had their display name 'blanked' out.
		A form has a custom field included which is missing from the database

ANALYSIS:
	Regardless of the cause, our current Development sandbox is corrupted.
	Fortunately, the Solution we developed is unmanaged, and was imported in Production as such.

	We have retained the ZIP file copies of each Version as it was exported.

	Further Development work is required, as well as ongoing maintenace, to the deployed solution.

SOLUTION:
	A new Development sandbox is required.

	We understand that it is possible to copy the structure and customizations only from
	Production to a new sandbox.

	This new DEV1 sandbox would be used for further development work, to be exported to the
	Production environment as an unmanaged solution.

QUESTION:
	Will this work?

	Can you copy the customizations and structure from a Production environment to a
	new sandbox, then modify the copied solution, and export it again to the original
	Production environment.

	Please keep in mind:
		There is only one internally developed solution involved
		The solution is unmanaged.

CONCLUSION:
	Thanks for reading this far.

	Any feed back or ideas would greatly appreciated.

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