Axapta

Since writing about how I monitor Dynamics AX batch processes from a more technical perspective, I have been asked how to set up monitoring for a complete Dynamics AX system.

Many years ago, Scott introduced me to Nagios, an open-source product designed to be able to monitor anything. At the office, we use it to monitor practically everything, and to fulfil Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, such as monitoring temperature or backup reliability. If we could, we'd monitor the coffee machine with Nagios.

Naturally since we've built our monitoring around this system, we use this to monitor our Dynamics AX environment too. Much of the information here could be adapted for monitoring other systems too, but the focus of this article will be simple monitoring for Dynamics AX.

Just under a month ago, we completed an upgrade of our Axapta 3.0 SP5 KR3 system to Dynamics AX 4.0 SP1. For those who don't know, Microsoft Dynamics AX is the new name for Microsoft Business Solutions Axapta.

During the upgrade, we ran into many problems, so I thought I'd write up the highlights so others in the same position could benefit. I don't seek to condemn the product, in fact I think the product in general is very good, however I believe this information should be available to help others out. All of these problems have been presented to Microsoft, at least a month ago, and I've also provided my solutions where applicable.