You're reading from Administrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Online

Product typeBook

Published inJul 2022

PublisherPackt

ISBN-139781803234809

Edition1st Edition

Tools

Dynamics 365

Concepts

Enterprise Resource Planning

Author (1)

Andrey Baludin

Chapter 8: Cloud Migration Schema and Limitations

We start Part 2 with Cloud Migration. Cloud Migration is a special tool that helps you to migrate your data from any on-premises Business Central environment (still supported in version 14) or Dynamics GP to the SaaS environment. It is free of charge and already included in your cloud environment even if you do not need it. You do not need to search for any distributives; the only thing you need to install additionally is a self-hosted integration runtime – part of the Cloud Migration tool. You will get a link to download it while you run the setup process.

The main official purpose of the Cloud Migration tool is to help you migrate from your on-premises environment to the cloud, but later we will look at a non-official usage – data consolidation. For some reasons (which we will find out about later), it is not officially recommended, but it works with some exceptions.

You do not need developer skills to use it....

Technical requirements

To create a migration, you must have the following:

A Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS tenant (also works on a demo tenant)
A SUPER user in the Business Central SaaS or a delegated admin with granted consent
A Microsoft 365 tenant admin account

The currently supported products for migration to SaaS are the following:

All versions of Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premises.
Dynamics GP 2015 and newer.
Dynamics NAV customers are also able to migrate, but they have to upgrade their systems to Dynamics 365 Business Central first. To find out how to do it, you can read the docs page here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/upgrade/upgrading-to-business-central.
On-premises SQL Server database:
- SQL Server 2016 and newer
- Compatibility level 130 (the compatibility level defines how SQL Server uses certain features)
- SQL Server authorization

Cloud Migration and how to use it

The Cloud Migration tool lives in your cloud environment. You can find it by searching for the Cloud Migration Management page. Before the setup, it should look empty.

Figure 8.1 – Cloud Migration Management

We can have a look at the backend and open the Installed Extensions page.

Figure 8.2 – Cloud Migration extensions

You can see three to four extensions here, related to Cloud Migration:

Business Central Intelligent Cloud: The main app.
Business Central Cloud Migration - Previous Release: This app lets you migrate old Business Central on-premises versions to the cloud.
Business Central Cloud Migration - Previous Release (Localization Code): Not mandatory. You can not use it in every localization. It contains localization specialties for the migration process.
Business Central Cloud Migration API: A new feature, introduced in the Business Central 2022 release wave...

Migration schema and the main nodes

The Cloud Migration tool consists of the following nodes:

On-premises SQL Server database or Azure SQL Database
Self-hosted integration runtime or Azure runtime
Azure Data Factory pipelines
Azure Integration Runtime for Data Factory
Business Central SaaS

The common migration schema looks like this:

Figure 8.7 – Cloud Migration schema

If you migrate from an on-premises SQL Server database, you must install the self-hosted integration runtime and register it with a special authentication key, which you get during the setup, to let Azure Data Factory connect to the database.

Figure 8.8 – Self-hosted integration runtime authentication key

For Azure SQL Database, the integration runtime is created automatically. Azure Data Factory only uses your SQL Server permissions with the user account that you use for the migration.

Migration limitation

Previously, the main limitation in Cloud Migration was the database size – 80 GB. Now, you can migrate larger-sized databases; but can does not mean should.

If you exceed the storage limit, the migration process will not stop; you will have to buy additional capacity with a storage add-on.

Microsoft recommends migrating no more than 30 GB per migration. But how do you achieve this if your database is large?

First of all, you can migrate your companies one by one. Select one company on the initial setup and you will be able to change the companies list to migrate later after the first company migrates.
Secondly, delete or archive unneeded data. Sounds easy, but this is a very tough process. Please refer to Chapter 6, for the details.
You can add the ReplicateData = False property to your custom tables if you do not want to replicate them.

Figure 8.9 – ReplicateData table property

If you want to migrate...

Summary

Now you know what Cloud migration is and what nodes it consists of. It is no longer a black box for you. You've seen that Cloud Migration is a very good tool but has some limitations that you need to be aware of. In the next chapter, you will learn, in detail, how to set up the migration process.

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Author (1)

Andrey Baludin

Andrey Baludin is a solution architect and is currently employed with Awara IT Solutions (Gold Microsoft Partner). His educational qualifications includes a masters degree from St.Petersburg Polytechnic University. Andrey is a Microsoft MVP and has been working with Microsoft Dynamics NAV since 2008 from 5.0 to the latest versions of Dynamics 365 Business Central. Andrey is a real fan of Business Central and Azure, and his specialization is integrating Business Central with everything
Read more about Andrey Baludin

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