Enterprise Portal authentication in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 – Finally something that makes sense!

In AX 2012 there is a new authentication terminology - Pluggable authentication. This type of authentication allows users who are not part of Active Directory access to the AX 2012 Enterprise Portal.

In a nutshell, AX 2012 integrates with SharePoint Pluggable Authentication, which provides authentication to external Enterprise Portal users that are not part of an organization's Active Directory.

Further, Pluggable Authentication provides an administrator three additional forms of authentication in addition to Active Directory:

1.       Active Directory Federated Service: Allows users who are associated with an external Active Directory to access Enterprise Portal.

a.       When an ADFS user is removed from the external Active Directory that user does not have access to Enterprise Portal.

2.       Forms Based Authentication: Allows users to authenticate against a custom database of users.

3.       Live Id: Users can authenticate to Enterprise Portal by using Windows Live Id.

See the following diagram:

For more information on the new Enterprise Portal changes in AX 2012 visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg845087.aspx#BKMKPluggableAuth

In addition, Brandon George has a really good post about the new Security Architecture in his blog, Check it out

http://dynamics-ax.blogspot.com/2011/06/microsoft-dynamics-ax-2012-security.html

Take care!

How is X++ converted to MSIL

Hi,

I found a superb video about how Microsoft is translating  X++ code to MSIL. I remember that this great new model was anounced at Convergence 2011.

Here it is.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Peter-Villadsen-and-Gustavo-Plancarte-Inside-Ax-Translator-X-to-MSIL

RAID in AX 2009 - AX 2009

With an ERP system such as Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, the database server generally stores a very large amount of important data for the business. If this data is unavailable for any length of time, the business could experience
significant financial losses.

Using a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) can help reduce the possibility of this loss occurring. Another important aspect for a database server is fine tuning for optimal performance. A RAID disk subsystem can also be used to help achieve this goal.

RAID refers to a group of two or more disks managed as a single unit to store the data together with additional, or redundant, information to provide recovery if there is a disk failure.

Usually a failed disk in a RAID system can be replaced while the server is still running. This is one benefit of RAID.

Create a Proxy Business Connector Account in active directory - AX 2009

Create the proxy account in Active Directory as follows:

1. Create a unique user in Active Directory in the form domain\username, for example, domain\bcproxy. This user must not have the same name as an existing Microsoft Dynamics AX user. For the procedure to add a new user, see the Active Directory documentation.

2. Assign a password to the user.

3. Select the Password does not expire option.

4. Select the No interactive logon rights option.

5. Close Active Directory

Error while trying to access Active Directory - AX 2009 -

Today I was trying to add some users by using the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009  Active Directory Import Wizard and I got the following error:

Error while trying to access Active Directory

I went into a code (Forms/SysUserADUserImportWizard/searchADUser) and I saw that the Active Directory searcher will break into this line:

searchResultCollection = directorySearcher.FindAll();