Dynamics Ax Performance Team Blog

Retail Benchmark Summary and Detailed Results published

2012-10-18T19:11:00Z

In 2012, Microsoft conducted a benchmark on Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to measure the performance and scalability characteristics of the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Feature Pack retail solution in a simulated retail scenario. The benchmark showcases the ability of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to handle various specialized loads concurrently, without compromising performance and scalability on critical business processes. Please find the reports here: PartnerSource CustomerSource...(read more)

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Benchmarks: Hyper-V, EP, and High-volume Inventory

2012-03-16T16:54:40Z

We are happy to announce that the following benchmarks will be available, just in time for Convergence 2012. We have published both summary and detail documents for each benchmark. Enterprise Portal benchmark In January 2012, Microsoft conducted a benchmark of Enterprise Portal for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to measure its performance and scalability characteristics.The benchmark runs a variety of functional scenarios that use Enterprise Portal, thereby providing a view of ERP workload performance...(read more)

Batch Parallelism in AX – Part - IV

2012-03-01T18:07:44Z

Comparison of the three techniques: Even Work Load: Invoicing of 100,000 single line Sales Orders. Bundle size used for this test is 1,000. Uneven workload: Invoicing of 1000 Sales Orders and the number of lines for the sales orders vary between 1 and 500. Bundle size used is 100. Very large number of work items: Since I wanted to use over a million work items for this test, instead of using the Sales Order invoicing, used a workload that completes much faster. (Check status of few...(read more)

Batch Parallelism in AX – Part - III

2012-02-28T17:20:11Z

Top Picking: The issue we have seen with bundling is uneven distribution of the workload. That was addressed by ‘Individual Task Modeling’. But the framework overhead of individual Tasks when there is a huge number of tasks will be so severe that this should be properly weighed in. ‘Top Picking’ is another batch technique that will address the uneven distribution problem. But this will suffer the same fate as ’Individual Task modeling’, if the number of work items is...(read more)

Batch Parallelism in AX – Part - II

2012-02-25T00:22:43Z

Individual Task Modeling Here in this case parallelism is achieved by creating a separate task for each work unit. You model the tasks by creating a task for each work item. You will have 1:1 mapping between task and the work item. This will eliminate the need for pre-allocation. Since each work item is independently handled by a worker thread, work load distribution will be more consistent. This approach eliminates the problem of a number of large work items getting bundled together and eventually...(read more)

Batch Parallelism in AX –Part - I

2012-02-24T22:56:25Z

Dynamics AX 2012 and AX 2009 have the ability to breakdown a batch job into small manageable fragments and process them independently in parallel. Ability to process them in parallel is critical to improve the throughput and response time for the batch job and shrink the batch window considerably. There are few different approaches available to break a huge batch job into small fragments. The three common approaches are 1. Batch Bundling. 2. Individual task modeling 3. Top Picking. Each one...(read more)

Dynamics AX 2012: Forms on opening hide behind in the back

2012-02-09T22:15:38Z

In Dynamics AX 2012, when you open the forms, you might see some of them open behind the other forms. User may get the impression that the form was never opened. This happens if the form opened slowly; a cold start, uniqueness of the data including large number of records or complexity of the form may cause the form to load up slowly. The form hide behind the other form because of Windows’s ‘ForegroundLockTimeout’. Doing the following changes to your system could fix...(read more)

AX 2012: Data upgrade best practices

2012-01-10T19:45:48Z

We have published a white paper on data upgrade best practices. The white paper includes many performance optimizations we’ve found through customer upgrades. It should benefit anyone who’s considering an upgrade from previous versions of AX to AX 2012. You can download the white paper from the following location: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=238709 ....(read more)

Using SysGlobalObjectCache (SGOC) and understanding it’s performance implications

2011-12-29T22:49:06Z

The SGOC is a kernel-managed cache. This is a new type of cache available in Dynamics AX 2012. Unlike the SysGlobalCache in AX2009 and older versions which has the session scope, SysGlobalObjectCache is truly global in nature. The data stored from one user connection is available for all the users. SGOC stores Key-Value pairs. Both Key and Value in the SGOC must be containers. This is because containers are passed by value and the content stored in them is not influenced by the changes...(read more)

Collect AX 2012 event traces with Windows Performance Monitor

2011-11-18T19:02:00Z

Users can collect AX 2012 event traces with the Tracing Cockpit tool (see previous posting ), the xClassTrace X++ class or the Windows Performance Monitor. Windows Performance Monitor is commonly used in the scenarios where AX 2012 client is not available, for example, collecting event traces for Enterprise Portal scenarios. Steps to collect AX 2012 event traces with Windows Performance Monitor: 1. On a box that runs the AOS instance you want to collect event traces from, start Windows Performance...(read more)

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012: Client Performance Options

2011-11-07T23:10:30Z

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 includes many UX enhancements, such as list pages, ribbons, fact boxes, preview panes, fast tabs, etc. These UX enhancements can help present relevant information at one place and reduce form switches. However, they come with certain performance characteristics. In this post, we’ll explain some of the issues and how to fix them with Client Performance Options. Potential issues with Factboxes and Preview Panes In the following figure, you can see the layout of a typical...(read more)

“Day in the Life Benchmark” available for Download on PartnerSource and CustomerSource.

2011-10-26T21:02:53Z

As of now the “Day in the Life Benchmark” for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is available for download. It showcases the immense amount of performance and scalability improvements which have gone into Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. Some of the highlights of the “Day in the Life” Benchmark: 1. 5200 Concurrent Users. 2. 1+ Million Lines per Hour across 10+ workloads. 3. Hardware price point of less than $100K (including the disk subsystem). For details, please download the full...(read more)

Client Access Log (Dynamics AX 2012)

2011-10-14T20:06:00Z

Keeping track of multiple users’ activities as they do their work in the system is of great benefit when we run into problem areas where there is no information provided as to the cause of the crash. Having this type of tracing included would allow us to turn on tracing for all users or a subset of users over a long period of time to try and help narrow in on problem areas which can then be investigated in greater detail. In Dynamics AX 2012, the administrator can choose to enable client...(read more)

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Trace Parser is now available for AX 2009 customers

2011-10-11T19:51:00Z

We want to make Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Trace Parser (Trace Parser 2012) available for AX 2009 customers and have just uploaded it to the PartnerSource and CustomerSource. Trace Parser 2012 is the latest version of Trace Parser that is shipped with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 product. Although Trace Parser 2012 was designed to work on AX 2012’s event tracing infrastructure, it supports AX 2009 trace files and works with AX 2009 AOS. Compared to its previous releases, Trace Parser 2012...(read more)

Consider Enabling Trace Flag 1117 on Dynamics AX SQL Server

2011-09-12T16:32:00Z

Correct configuration of the tempdb database is crucial for Dynamics AX workloads. Two of the key recommendations are to maintain one tempdb data file per processor core, and to ensure that all tempdb data files are the same size. Trace flag 1117 (-T1117) can help keep tempdb data files the same size in case tempdb needs to autogrow. Say you have eight tempdb data files with an initial size of 1000MB and autogrow of 200MB each. If the tempdb database needs to autogrow, the default behavior is...(read more)

Improvements on the global methods buf2con and con2buf in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

2011-09-08T05:58:00Z

The global methods buf2con and con2buf are used on X++ to convert table buffers into containers and vice versa. New functionality has been added to these methods and they had been improved to be much faster than their implementation on previous versions of AX. On Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, a table buffer is converted into a container by packing the values of its fields into a single blob and then it is stored as one element inside a container. This process is much faster than previous versions...(read more)

Walk through major features of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Trace Parser (Part 2)

2011-09-06T21:54:00Z

Analyze traces Open Traces Once a trace file is imported, it is automatically opened in Trace Parser. Alternatively, users can click the “File -> Open trace” menu item to bring up the “Select trace” dialog to open an imported trace. Select session Click the Session drop-down combo box to bring up session list: The example above shows three server sessions (the sessions under “Ax32Serv.exe”) and one client session (the session under Ax32.exe...(read more)

Walk through major features of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Trace Parser (Part 1)

2011-08-15T20:58:00Z

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Trace Parser is a performance analyzer that helps users discover and resolve performance problems in customized Microsoft Dynamics AX systems. Unlike its previous versions, Trace Parser is now a component within the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 release. Trace Parser provides user interfaces to import, process and render ETW tracing events that produced by Microsoft Dynamics AX. User can then analyze tracing events to identify performance bottlenecks such as long-running...(read more)

Dynamics AX 2012 is generally available

2011-08-03T20:44:53Z

As of August 1, 2011, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is generally available in 25 countries and 23 languages. Read the full release blog on Microsoft Dynamics ERP “The Edge” Blog With the release of Dynamics AX2012, we will start publishing a serie of blogs about new performance features, configuration setting, best practices, and pitfalls to avoid. Stay tuned!...(read more)

Video: How to collect a trace within Dynamics AX

2011-04-27T02:21:00Z

My name is Ray Bennett, and I am formerly a member of the AX Performance team. During my work with the performance team I helped many customers learn how to use the Trace Parser tool. I have decided to share this knowledge in the form of a video blog on the Dynamics AX in the Field Blog . I plan on a set of 3 videos How to collect a trace Analyzing the trace Finding common performance issues within AX You can find a link to the video here . Ray Bennett Premier Field Engineer...(read more)

Microsoft Dynamics AX Technical Conference 2011

2010-08-11T16:08:00Z

Next year is an important milestone in the history of Microsoft Dynamics AX—this is our most innovative release to date. We will hold a pre-release technical conference for customers and partners who want to jump start their learning and understanding about how to build solutions on the new Microsoft Dynamics AX. More information about the event is listed below, including dates, registration information, content overview, attendee demographics, and a short Q&A. Microsoft Dynamics...(read more)

Cross Company - Part 1: Updated KB Article

2010-07-06T18:06:08Z

A new KB article now supersedes the previous one in the original of this post. Here is the link: https://mbs.microsoft.com/knowledgebase/KBDisplay.aspx?scid=kb$en-us$979945&wa=wsignin1.0 Refer to KB979945 in any correspondence regarding the cross company fix....(read more)

Dynamics AX Trace Parser Update 2

2010-05-12T17:47:00Z

We have just released an update to Trace Parser with a lot of bug fixes. You can get it off from Partner Source or Customer Source. If you have any issues, you can contact me through the blog and I will do my best to help you. If you have any feedback we will be releasing an Update 3 so please send it in. https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/downloads/servicepacks/ax_traceparser.htm?printpage=false&stext=traceparser...(read more)

Important SQL Server Change! - Parameter Sniffing and Query Plan Caching

2010-05-07T17:10:00Z

Some of you that attended Convergence may have heard about a significant SQL Server change that can result in substantial performance improvements for Dynamics AX customers. You can find details on the change and how to acquire the associated SQL Server Cumulative Update (CU) in the following KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980653/ Parameter sniffing is the default behavior that SQL Server uses when compiling parameterized SQL statements. All SQL emitted from AX is parameterized...(read more)

Cross Company - Part 1

2010-04-13T19:46:00Z

There are important changes in the fix documented in Knowledge Base article 977326 that should improve performance for cross company queries. The good news is that some of the changes are applicable for other types of query performance issues beyond that of cross company queries. I’ll be describing the effects of the fix over this and a couple of subsequent posts over the next few days, so please stay tuned. First of all, let’s describe the default behavior the AX kernel takes when a cross...(read more)