Use Lifecycle Services to deploy Dynamics AX on Azure

For sure, gone are the days when having AX environment used to take days. If you already have investment in the cloud and planning to go with Dynamics AX, choosing Microsoft Azure should be a straight forward decision. With AX going cloud and Microsoft releasing next big version of AX exclusively on Azure (on-premise coming late in 2016), should indicate where things are heading in ERP world or in general with IT. AX is now also available as an Azure Marketplace offering, where partners can release their solutions as ready to go thing. Companies are now also moving from the initial cloud hesitation and adopting the elastic technology that helps scale with rapidly growing business requirements.

That said, let's see how to deploy Dynamics AX 2012 R3 workload on Microsoft Azure in less than 60 minutes.

Step 1)
Login to Lifecycle Services using your CustomerSource or PartnerSource account.

Step 2) Create LCS Project
A project is an umbrella to manage AX implementation. Customers and Partners can invite each other to participant in the implementation process.

Figure 1: Create Project

Figure 2: Select product name, version, industry and methodology

Step 3) Map LCS Project with Azure
Configure Microsoft Azure for this project. This will connect the project with your Microsoft Azure subscription.

Figure 3: Map Azure subscription with LCS Project

 Fill out your Azure subscription and download the Management Certificate.

Figure 4: Your Azure subscription id

Figure 5: Download and save

Upload this certificate to your Microsoft Azure account.

Figure 6: Upload to your Azure subscription

Complete the Microsoft Azure Setup wizard.

Step 4) Deploy AX to Azure
Once you have your Azure subscription connected to your LCS project, you can now deploy AX to Azure. As of this writing LCS tool only supports DEMO, DEVELOPMENT and TEST deployments to Azure.

Figure 7: Add environment

We will deploy DEMO AX instance (Contoso) for now that will be deployed on one Virtual Machine.

Figure 8: Select topology

Select your AX version. Remember the selection will depend on the Project’s product version attribute.

Figure 9: Select AX version

Provide AX environment name and VM size.

Figure 10: Environment name and size

Click finish to complete the setup. The process will take some time depending on VM size selected.

Figure 11

Once finished, you can see you newly created VM in LCS or on your Azure account. You can click on VM link that will provide you RDC file to connect with Contoso\Administrator credentials.

Figure 12: LCS status

Figure 13: Azure status