4/20/2018 Architecture - Implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

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Architecture

The Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations architecture is completely overhauled its
predecessor, Dynamics AX 2012 R3. It is built for the cloud, to embrace the investment and
innovation happening in the Microsoft Azure cloud. The Finance and Operations architecture is built
for the cloud rst and uses a modern user interface, integration, and web technologies. Dynamics
365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition can be deployed on cloud, on-premises, or as a
hybrid. Cloud deployment uses Microsoft Azure, and the production environment is fully managed by
Microsoft, while on-premise deployments are deployed locally within a customer's data center.

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Hybrid deployment is also called Cloud and Edge, where business-critical operations, such as retail,
warehouse management, and so on, can be deployed across distributed on-premise environments
and connected to the cloud for a single view of the business, cloud services, and disaster recovery. 
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Conceptual architecture

From the conceptual architecture perspective, all deployment use the same application stack, clients,
development environment, and application lifecycle management. The difference is primarily on the
infrastructure, database, and identity provider. The following diagram represents a high-level
conceptual architecture of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition:

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As shown in the preceding diagram, Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations can be divided into 
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the following conceptual components:

 Identity: This component represents the identity and authentication management of Dynamics 365 for
Finance and Operations. In cloud deployment, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is used for
authentication, while on-premise deployment relies on on-premise Active Directory Federation Services
(AD FS) for authentication.

 Data/storage: This is the data or storage layer, which the database used to the core business con guration
and transaction data. In cloud deployment, SQL Azure is used as the database. On-premise deployment
uses Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Standard edition or Enterprise edition.

 Platform: This layer represents the compute, operating system, and applications to host the various
components of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. Cloud deployment uses many features of the
Azure platform, such as virtual machine, Azure storage, networking, monitoring, and so on. On-premise
deployment uses on-premise infrastructure and VMs to deploy the various components through the
service fabric standalone cluster. 

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 Application: This layer in the architecture diagram represents the Dynamics 365 for Finance and
Operations application components, metadata, and code. The core application components of Finance and
Operations are the same, irrespective of the deployment choices.

 Client: This represents the various client components to access Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations,
such as the browser client, mobile app, and Of ce 365. 

 Development tools: Visual studio is the exclusive development environment for a developer to extend the
existing application logic or build new features. 

 Lifecycle services: These manage the application's lifecycle, including deployment, monitoring, and support
for the cloud, as well as on-premise deployments.

Now let's look at the deployment architecture of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. Later in
this chapter, we will explore the various components and architecture in detail. 

Deployment architecture

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Deployment architecture depicts the mapping of a  architecture to a environment. The physical
environment includes the computing nodes and services, and how they connect with each other to
make the nal environment. In this section, let's explore the deployment architecture of Dynamics
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365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition.

The cloud deployment architecture 

The Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition architecture is for cloud- rst,
which is the recommended and preferred option of deployment. Cloud deployment uses Microsoft
Azure, managed by Microsoft, as the cloud platform. The following diagram shows an example of the
production environment deployment architecture:

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To understand the diagram, let's walk through the image from left to right and explore the various 
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components and their roles:

 Client devices: These are the devices that use Finance Operations through the web browser or mobile
apps. The Of ce 365 and Power BI applications connect using OData.

 Azure traf c manager: This is used for DNS resolution Azure region identi cation. It also redirects to
remote Azure data centers in disaster recovery scenarios.

 Azure load balancer: This is used for VM-level balancing--generally, round robin, but more custom
solutions are possible.

 Azure active directory: This provides management and authentication. Optionally, you can use Azure sync
to sync identities from your on-premise active directory.

 App gateways: These are for application-level load balancing, essentially for session management between
the client and server and mainly for AOS.

 Application VMs: These are deployed the HA (high availability) mode (at least two in the availability set).
Application VMs can be scaled out based on demand. There are separate VMs for AOS, retail sever
(optional), and management reporter and reporting services. AOS is deployed as a web app on IIS and

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Windows services for batch processing. Management reporter, reporting services, and retail servers are
also deployed on the IIS as web apps.

 Data layer: All databases are on SQL Azure. Blob storage is used to stores les.

 Note
This architecture diagram is just an example to help you understand the architecture; your actual deployment
design will vary according to your resources and requirements.

The on-premise deployment architecture 

The on-premise deployment option uses Finance and O components running on the premises,
leveraging service fabric standalone clusters. The following diagram shows an example of the on-
premise deployment architecture with the minimum recommended nodes for Dynamics 365 for

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Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition:

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Let's again walk through the preceding image left to right and explore the various components:

 Client devices: Similar to the cloud environment, various devices use a web browser or mobile application
to access Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operation, Enterprise edition. Of ce 365 uses OData for
communication.

 Load balancer: The network load balancer is used for balancing the load between application nodes and
redirecting the disaster recovery scenario.

 ADFS and AD: Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) is used along the on-premise active directory
for authentication.

 Application VMs: In on-premise deployment, all the core components of nance and operations are
deployed using the service fabric standalone cluster. In addition to the regular application VMs, another
set of VMs is needed for on-premise environment management from LCS.

 Database layer: All databases are created on Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Standard edition or Enterprise
edition. Server Message Block (SMB) 3.0 storage cluster  unstructured data on the AOS servers.

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 Note
This architecture diagram is just an example to understand the architecture; your actual deployment design will
vary according to your resources and requirements.At the time of writing this book, the Power BI integration
was not available for on-premise deployments. In the future, there may be a possibility of enabling the Power BI
through data synchronization to cloud.

On-premise deployment was made available for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations,
Enterprise edition in June 2017. At the time of writing this book, many features were not supported
or needed to be con gured differently from cloud deployments.

 Note

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For the latest details on the on-premise deployment option, follow https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/dynamics365/uni ed-operations/dev-itpro/deployment/on-premises-deployment-landing-page
(https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/uni ed-operations/dev-itpro/deployment/on-premises-
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deployment-landing-page).

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