Microsoft Business Applications Summit: Best Practices on Database Lifecycle Management (Self-Service)
By Khalid Mohammed, Technical Services Manager, Arbela Technologies
Microsoft is working towards making huge changes in database lifecycle management for Dynamics 365 for Finance and operations. They have introduced us to a few cool features in LCS calling it 'self-service' at Microsoft Business Application Summit 2018.
Features that were discussed and introduced were:
- Maintenance Mode
- Sandbox Refresh, Import and Export database as self-serve
- Pont in time restore, refresh sandbox with a point in time restore from production
- Scheduling database movement operations.
I found the sandbox Refresh, import, and export database as self-serve to be an interesting and most logical thing that is much needed for our many customers. In past, the database refresh from Production to sandbox environment was:
- Raise a Microsoft service request with 5 hours lead time.
- 1-hour downtime on Sandbox environment.
This means waiting for 6 hours to debug an production issue and we lose a lot of time and can be a huge impact for the customer. With this new feature that Microsoft has introduced for sandbox environment, wait time decreases to 1-hour. Let's look at the process with new 'Self-service' feature for Refreshing sandbox environment from Production environment.
Refresh Sandbox data from Production
- Login to lcs.dynamics.com
- Navigate to full details of your sandbox environment and go to Maintain section (follow the screenshot.)
- Select 'Refresh database'
- Next, select the Prod environment and read and acknowledge the terms and conditions.
- Refresh DB starts
- Voila!!! You will have your data ready in your sandbox environment in 1 hour. This feature is not available for the public yet but available for preview partners only. I have tested this feature today and found it really helpful to troubleshoot production support issues. Thank you Microsoft Dynamics team for putting together this feature.
Note: This is a preview feature and would be available for the public by August 2018.
Microsoft has published some timelines for the above called 'self-service' features:
Self -service feature |
Timeline |
Maintenance Mode |
August 2018 |
Sandbox Refresh, Import and Export database as self-serve |
August 2018 |
Pont in time restore, refresh sandbox with a point in time restore from production |
September 2018 |
Scheduling database movement operations. |
Q1 |
Features in detail:
- Import database – Ability to import the database into Sandbox (Tier-2) environment with One-click action.
- Export database – Ability to export the database from Sandbox(Tier-2) environment with One-click action.
- Refresh sandbox with a copy of production – One-click action as explained above.
- Point in time restore of sandbox – One-click action without service request.
- Refresh sandbox with a point in time restore a copy of production – This is not available right now but it would be available and can really help audit team for analysis.