The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the May release of Lifecycle Services which shipped successfully over the weekend using uninterrupted deployment framework.

NEW FEATURES

  •  A new AX 2012 R3 update experience is now publicly available on the Environments page. You can find additional information here.
  •  AxUtil build validation has been removed from Customization analysis. Customization analysis can now process any model files regardless of the exported AxUtil version.
  •  If Cloud-powered support cannot infer the kernel version when creating a VM, a VM with the latest kernel version that’s available will be provisioned.
  •  Several new features are available for Cloud-hosted environments: 
    • Infrastructure estimator can now include the following in estimations: Remote Desktop Services servers, Help servers, and G- series VMs.
    • The Azure VM Agent is now automatically deployed with every VM deployed via LCS.
    • Deployment times for topologies have been reduced by 20-40%* due to the following changes:
      • Azure gallery images: All pre-req VHDs are distributed via the Azure worldwide network.
      • VMs of a like type in a topology are now configured at the same time.
    • Storage commitments have been reduced due to the following changes:
      • Copies of VHD files (which were used to create the VMs in your environment) are no longer saved in your storage account.
      • Previously, AX 2012 installation files and demo data files were stored on separate disk drives in SQL Server deployments. They are now stored on the same disk drive, which frees up a disk for your use.
      • Storage accounts are now Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) accounts, rather than Geographically Redundant Storage (GRS) accounts. 
    • We’ve aligned to SQL Server best practices of 64k cluster size. This results in up to a 20% increase in performance.

    *Does not include Demo VMs 

  • Issue search now:
    • Displays details that indicate when a fix applies to the application, kernel, or both.
    • Has received significant performance upgrades. 
  • Enhancements have been made to the System diagnostic service. We recommend that you install the latest version of the System diagnostic on-premises component.