Monitoring Pack for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Hi there!

There is a new tool for AX 2012 called Management Pack(similar to the one for AX 2009) that will automatically discover the entire AX environment; This is, AOS's, application frameworks, databases, reporting servers, enterprise portal server and analysis servers. In addition, it monitors each component for configuration, availability and performance.

The Management Pack provides warnings, at an early stage, that an operator can use to quickly identify issues that could affect the performance and availability of the Dynamics AX system.

Feature Summary

• Visual representation of the entire Dynamics AX 2012 environment with health rollup
• Monitors for Database, AOS, Enterprise portal servers, Reporting servers and framework components
• AOS clusters and AOS Servers monitored
• Events view for AOS and Enterprise Portal Events
• SCOM Tasks for most common AX administrative actions

You can download the tool from here.

Take care!

AX 2012 - Run Reports without hitting the Production DB

Hi there!

My fellow Sunriser, Brandon George,  has written an amazing article about running reports without hitting the Production Database.

Form the article:

"Since the default .Net Business Connector configuration for SSRS is pointing back to the same AX instance, when the SSRS instance is executing the reporting and firing the Data Extensions to get to the correct Query object and therefore data, then in this standard approach, we are hitting the production database for your instance of AX..."

"The critical keys that enable this concept are, (1) having the production instance of your AOS and Reporting Server setup, pointing to your SSRS server role within AX. (2) Changing what AOS the SSRS server hits for processing data, by deploying a custom configuration file. (3) Log Shipping is enabled at on the AX Production database, so that the AX Reporting Database is kept up to date with live data."

"...That is code promotion, or change management. Why does this matter? Well simply put, it's because the model store that represents the application now lives as a part of the production database. This then gets replicated when any changes take place."

Brandon George is a Senior Technical Architect at Sunrise Technologies and I personally believe he is one of the few people in the world that has truly master AX. I strongly suggest to follow his blog as it contains valuable, innovative, and critical information about AX.

You can access his blog (and the article) from here.

Take care!

Changes in Reporting tools and Enterprise Portal in AX 2012

Hi there!

Well, I would assume that we are all excited about the new changes around the Reporting and Enterprise Portal tools in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, right?

Well, we should be, as Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 has truly eliminated the need of having to install two different pieces of software to support reporting and EP development.  Currently, in AX 2009 the Reporting and EP tools are required components that we “have” to install in order to integrate AX 2009 and Visual Studio 2008.

 In AX 2012, however, standard Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 tolls can be used to achieve this Reporting and EP Development.  

In AX 2012 most of the basic development and some customization tasks (like creating new pages or adding Web parts to existing pages are all performed directly in SharePoint) related to the Enterprise Portal can be performed using SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010. In addition, AX 2012 allows us to focus on the development of content Web parts in the Enterprise Portal by only using the Enterprise Portal framework and Visual Studio.  In fact, the most sophisticated functionality of Enterprise Portal is created by using Visual Studio.

Personally, I believe, the fact that EP proxies were taken out of the equation is a great step, as this created endless issues when updating EP proxies between AX 2009 and Visual Studio 2008. In fact, it was a suitable nightmare!

Reporting is not that bad in AX 2009, but the fact that we needed to install a piece of software to make it work really bothered me. Instead, AX 2012 provides a model-based approach to develop any type of report. It also provides templates and modeling tools that are part of Visual Studio.  Further, the reporting features provided by AX 2012 are really well integrated with SQL Server Reporting Services, which includes a set of tools for us to define reports in the Visual Studio.

I believe in simplicity, and the less we need to worry about installing several pieces of software to only make “one thing” work, the better.

Take care!

AX 2012 Extended Architecture

AX 2012 Extended Architecture

Besides the common (most simple) AX 2012 architecture, there are several other components of the Microsoft technology stack are used in a typical deployment.

The following is a list of the one that are most commonly deploy with implementations:

1. Reports are delivered by SQL Reporting Services (SSRS). SSRS is a component included in SQL Server.
2. Business Intelligence (BI) components such as Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) use Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) cubes which are delivered by SQL Analysis Services (SSAS). SSAS is a component included in SQL Server as well.
3. The Enterprise Portal and Role Pages are hosted in SharePoint. There are two versions of SharePoint that can be used. Window SharePoint Foundation 2010 is a free download. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is a product that can be purchased to provide extended collaboration and content management tools.
4. Integration to other applications or to third party organizations might require integration solutions such as web services.

The following picture describes a high level extended architecture:

Take Care!

[Some of the iinformation in this article has been taken from a Microsoft Training Manuals]

Ax 2009 SSRS Videos

While looking for some information related to AX 2009 SSRS I found a bunch of videos related to SSRS and AX 2009.

Here is the link:

http://youtu.be/ZIoEZWaiBXI

Reporting & BI in AX: An Overview

The following link contains an amazing post about Reporting and BI in AX by Arijit Basu. I just felt obligated to share this great overview.

http://daxguy.blogspot.com/2008/01/reporting-bi-in-ax-overview-level-100.html