Basics of environment planning for Microsoft Dynamics 365 finance and operations

This blog is bit different from my other blogs where I write about features within application. But as functional consultant or even if you are technical consultant starting your career or are beginner, then there are few things which we should know apart from the application feature and environment planning is one of them.

In this blog we will understand basics of environmental planning any project which will help us in understanding the concept and in planning for the project.

Disclaimer: This piece of information is already part of MB-300 course and I am using the information from this course only.

Lets start:

Environment terminologies: Lets understand different terminologies

Environment purpose

The reasons why the environment exists. Examples include development, system testing, user acceptance testing (UAT), and operations.

Environment topology

The composition of the environment and the purpose. Examples include Develop and Build and Test for Tier-1 environments.

Environment tier

The type or category of the environment. Examples include Tier-1 environments and Tier-2 environments.

Environment types

Standard – This environment is included in the standard offer and is managed by Microsoft in a Microsoft subscription. Standard environments include the production environment and a Tier-2 Standard Acceptance Test environment.

Add-on – The add-on environments are in a Microsoft-managed subscription that the customer has purchased in addition to the standard offer. For example, an add-on environment might be an additional Tier-4 environment for performance testing.

Cloud-hosted – Cloud-hosted environments are additional environments that are managed by the customer or partner in a customer or partner Microsoft Azure subscription. A cloud-hosted environment can include a Tier-1 demo environment.

Environment image (VHD) – These additional Tier-1 environments are hosted on-premises by using a virtual hard disk (VHD) that can be downloaded

ReF: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/fin-ops/imp-lifecycle/environment-planning#environment-planning-overview

Now question comes what you get as standard offering when customer buys licences?

Standard cloud offer

The standard cloud offer includes two environments:

Tier-2 environment: Standard Acceptance Testing – One Standard Acceptance Testing (UAT) instance is provided for the duration of the subscription. This instance is a non-production multi-box instance that customers can use for UAT, integration testing, and training. Additional sandbox/staging instances can be purchased separately as an optional add-on.

Production environment – One production instance is provided per tenant. The production multi-box instance includes disaster recovery and high availability. It will be provisioned when the implementation approaches the Operate phase, after the required activities in the Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) methodology and a successful go-live assessment are completed. Additionally, some file storage and database storage are included in the offer:

File storage: Every customer receives a certain amount of file/Azure blob cloud storage for files and binary data. Additional file/blob storage can be purchased.

Database storage: Every subscription includes a certain amount of Azure SQL Database storage per customer at no additional charge. Additional storage capacity is provided at no charge as an organization increases the number of user and device service licenses.

Note: Additional environments can be purchased as add-ons, or they can be deployed as cloud-hosted environments. The following illustration shows a sample overview of standard and additional environments, based on the complexity of the implementation.

Deployment considerations for development environments

For development environments, there are two deployment options:

• Cloud-hosted – The environments are managed by the customer/partner in a customer/partner Azure subscription.
  • Environment image (downloadable VHD) – The environments are hosted on-premises.

Now here is one example based on complexity of project or size of the project we can deploy or plan environments:

That’s it for this blog, hope this will help you understand the environment planning for your project.

Thank you!!! Keep reading and sharing!!!