Best Practices for Windows Patching in Dynamics AX 2012 or Previous Versions
If you are planning to do some Windows patching for Dynamics AX 2012 (or lower versions) read through the following recommendations before beginning your project.
Tips to consider for Windows Patching Dynamics AX 2012:
- Always patch your lower Dynamics AX environments first (Development, TEST, UAT ie. Non-Production)– to make sure the patches are not going to cause any issues.
- For Dynamics AX, please inform users the system would be down for maintenance. Have users reschedule the Dynamics AX batch jobs so they get run before the system goes down or after the AX system comes back up. They may set the job status to Withhold or change the next run time to a time after the Windows patches are done.
- Take a full SQL backup of all your SQL databases.
- Make sure no users are in the Dynamics AX system before you shutdown AX (AOS). Coordinate this with any other 3rd parties AX integration you may have.
- Shut down all the services related to Dynamics AX, AND set the services Startup type to Manual – during the windows patching, your servers might reboot multiple times. So, you want to make sure services related to AX are set to manual so they don’t get started automatically during the patching.
- The services to be shut down for Dynamics AX:
- Any 3rd party related services that integrate with AX, for example, the following services - Atlas, Management Reporter, SSAS, SSRS, SharePoint, then the AOS services (2nd last), and lastly SQL server service last. Shut the services down in this order and start them back up in the reverse order after the windows patching is done. - Patch all servers related to that Dynamics AX environment at the same time. Do not apply patches to only some of your AX servers in your AX environment. (SQL, SSRS, SSAS, SharePoint, AOS, RDP servers ie. any servers with AX component or 3rd party installed)
If you have further questions or need help with your system, let us know!
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