Database Maintenance Strategies with Microsoft Dynamics AX AX utilizes SQL Indexes in order to speed up queries to the database. It is important that any index created is analyzed for its usage pattern; for example, will the query only be made once per day, or thousands of times in a loop? It might...

We're excited to introduce the next evolution with our Performance Analyzer for Microsoft Dynamics toolset. We'll review the concepts today at Convergence at the Performance Analyzer for Microsoft Dynamics session at 5pm in the Hilton Ballroom B on the 2nd floor. In this post, we'll list the reports...

Rod Hansen and I headed south to Minneapolis (yes, everything is south of Fargo) to join the Minnesota chapter of AXUG for dinner and a discussion on the Performance Analyzer tool. The Minnesota chapter is very well attended and we had a good turnout for this meeting - about 20 folks there in total....

In my previous blog about Determining Disk Latency with Performance Analyzer for Microsoft Dynamics , I spoke of how to determine the disk latency. In testing, we have determined that the computed latency from sys.dm_virtual_io_file_stats does not match Windows Performance Monitor Avg. Disk Sec/Read...

One of the new features in Performance Analyzer 1.10 for Microsoft Dynamics is support for new DMVs in SQL 2008 R2 SP1 and SQL 2012. In this blog, we’ll explain what the new DMVs are and how they are used in analysis of performance issues in Microsoft Dynamics deployments. New DMVs: sys...

We would like to announce the release of Performance Analyzer 1.10 for Microsoft Dynamics. This new and exciting release has a long list of new features: Peformance Analyzer 1.10 NOTE: SQL Server 2008 and above only for this version. · An hourly capture of data that shows your transaction...

Our Premier Field Engineers travel a lot. When customers need assistance during deployments or need a workshop or want to make sure their team is up to speed on what we're delivering, they request us to be onsite and we come on out. The opportunity to be out working directly at the customer site greatly...

We are getting close to the release of the Version 1.10 for the Performance Analyzer for Dynamics , and we thought it would be a great time to start getting feedback for the next version of the tool (Version 1.2). We have some plans in place already, including adding hooks into AX 2012 to pull more configuration...

Back in November 2010 I talked about four SQL Server trace flags that I found to be helpful in improving performance for Dynamics AX. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/axinthefield/archive/2010/11/04/sql-server-trace-flags-for-dynamics-ax.aspx . One of the trace flags I mentioned was 1224. This is the one...

Thanks to everyone who attended Rod Hansen's session on the Performance Analyzer for Microsoft Dynamics at Convergence. We had a great turnout and great interaction within the session. They are still compiling the survey results, but as of last night, Rod's session was the #1 rated session with more...

Are you pushing a lot of transactions through the AX batch framework? Are you wondering if you've optimized the system for your workload? We recently did some testing in our lab to illustrate some of the performance and concurrency characteristics of the AX 2009 batch framework. Our goal was to show...

In part 1 of this series, we covered the basic prerequisites of taking a trace. In this post I'm going to cover some best practices around capturing trace data and how to troubleshoot some common issues that may prevent trace files from being created. The steps below apply to both Dynamics AX 2009 and...

Recently a fellow PFE compiled a list of the AX Event IDs with their description and a possible action. This post is intended to give end users a better idea of the messages generated by the AOS service within the Application Event Log within the Windows Event Viewer. If you are receiving messages...

Performance Analyzer 1.0 for Microsoft Dynamics is the tool used by Microsoft Dynamics support, Premier Field Engineers, and product team members to diagnose performance issues with Dynamics products. The following is a step-by-step guide to installing this toolset on your SQL Server environment. ...

[Ed. Note - this is a repost of an article Michael DeVoe posted to the NAV Team blog, but it applies equally to Dynamics AX] I recently came across an issue with a large Dynamics ERP customer where queries were becoming slower over time, and blocking significantly increased. After going through the...

Dynamics AX has a tracing feature that allows you to generate ETW traces of the client and server activity on your system. The information collected in these traces includes a call tree, SQL statements, and durations for all of the different code that executes. This kind of trace data can be extremely...

Our Dynamics Services team has been doing Performance services for customers over the past 10 years. We've learned a lot in that time - what information to collect, what key pieces of data to focus on and how to analyze all this data. Over the evolution of SQL Server and our products, we've used a number...

The purpose of this post is to list and briefly explain 4 SQL Server trace flags that we've found to be helpful in certain circumstances when working with our Dynamics AX customers in the field. In general, I don't recommend enabling these trace flags unless you're experiencing the specific issues they...