2. Managing SQL Server for AX
Corey Vantilborg, Tigercat Industries
#CollaborateCanada

3. Introduction

4. Corey Vantilborg
4 Years Dedicated AX Administrator at a Manufacturing Company
Responsible for all aspects of technical implementation
Acted as SME for Manufacturing group for majority of project
Developer as required

5. Dynamics AX @ Tigercat Multi-Company, Multi-Site implementation
Two Primary companies are both manufacturing (1 OEM and 1 Custom)
Implementation began with selection process in late 2011
Initial go-live in July 2014
Final Go-Live completing this year
Many modifications including large ISV (Annata IDMS)

6. PREMIUM FORESTRY EQUIPMENT
Release date 15 April 2016
30 May 2016 – Removed South Korean distributor
PREMIUM FORESTRY EQUIPMENT

7. Who we are… Privately owned Canadian corporation
Industry leader in forestry equipment design
Strong engineering and manufacturing capabilities
Customer-driven innovation
Worldwide dealer network

8. 2016 profile 9 manufacturing locations in southern Ontario
Parts facilities in Ailey, Georgia and Hede, Sweden
1,300 employees
138 dealers around the world:
Canada, US, South America, Africa, Western Europe, Russia, Australia and New Zealand
Complete lineup of forestry and off-road industrial equipment
17,000 machines built and counting!

9. Advanced manufacturing

10. In the field

11. In the field

12. In the field

13. Audience
Dynamics AX Administrator who is either responsible for or consults on the OLTP database which hosts Dynamics AX.

14. Agenda
SQL Configuration
SQL Performance
SQL Day to Day Activities

15. SQL Configuration Most information drawn from
x-performance-analyzing-key-sql-server-configuration- and-database-settings/

16. Specific Configuration Issues to watch out for
Database Collation
Collation between the business database and modelstore database must be the same.

17. High- Availability /Redundancy Options
Always-On Availability Groups
Multiple Database servers in a cluster with a single primary and multiple secondary nodes.
Preferred option for AX
Allows for automatic fail-over, with no AOS crash
Log Shipping
Automated Log backup and restore to secondary node
Database mirroring
Multiple server instances sharing storage and database files
Depreciated
-Tigercat moved away from AAG due to extra failure modes

18. SQL Performance

19. Resource Monitor / Task Manager
Basic Real-time tools for monitors server level performance and utilization
Helpful for at a glance information
-Note that Tigercat uses SCOM for a single window view of many performance counters.
-Won’t cover full monitoring solutions -

20. Performance Monitor
Able to monitor and log many counters within windows

21. PAL Performance Analysis of Logs
Downloadable Microsoft tool for analysing Performance Monitor outputs

22. SSMS : Activity Monitor
Shows information about what SQL is doing in real-time
Can be filtered to determine the source of locking issues.

23. Correlating AX Sessions to SQL SPID
Microsoft blog
ft.com/amitkulkarni/2011/ 08/10/finding-user- sessions-from-spid-in- dynamics-ax-2012/
Needs to be done on each AOS, and the AOS restarted
select cast(context_info as varchar(128)) as ci
, session_id
,host_name
,login_time
,status
,cpu_time
,reads
,writes
,last_request_start_time
,last_request_end_time
from sys.dm_exec_sessions where program_name like '%Dynamics%'
--Enter SQL SPID to find
and session_id = 1130
-Watch for SQL to determine if a SPID is doing work, or if AX is frozen in some way

24. Monitor AAG Cluster Quick Query to monitor the health of an AAG
Investigate Log Re-Use State
Investigate Replica Status
Investigate Transaction Log space
-Demo Live on SQLSAV01

25. General SQL Tasks

26. Item Consistency Check Prep
Certain Issues will prevent the Item Consistency check from running correctly
These SQL queries will find the data to allow for easy correction

27. Missing Item Groups -- Items Missing Item Groups select
inventtable.ITEMID,
inventtable.NAMEALIAS,
inventtable.TCI_PLANNERCODEID,
inventtable.AMITEMMAJORGROUPID
from INVENTTABLE
left join INVENTITEMGROUPITEM on INVENTTABLE.ITEMID = INVENTITEMGROUPITEM.ITEMID and INVENTTABLE.DATAAREAID = INVENTITEMGROUPITEM.ITEMDATAAREAID
where INVENTITEMGROUPITEM.RECID is null
-Demo Live on SQLSAV01

28. Missing Item Model Group
--Items Missing Item Model Groups
select
inventtable.ITEMID,
inventtable.NAMEALIAS,
inventtable.TCI_PLANNERCODEID,
inventtable.AMITEMMAJORGROUPID,
inventtable.DATAAREAID
from INVENTTABLE
left join INVENTMODELGROUPITEM on INVENTMODELGROUPITEM.ITEMID = inventtable.ITEMID and inventtable.DATAAREAID = INVENTMODELGROUPITEM.ITEMDATAAREAID
where INVENTMODELGROUPITEM.RECID is null
-Demo Live on SQLSAV01

29. Missing Tracking Dimension Group
select
inventtable.ITEMID,
inventtable.NAMEALIAS,
inventtable.TCI_PLANNERCODEID,
inventtable.AMITEMMAJORGROUPID,
inventtable.DATAAREAID
from INVENTTABLE
left join ECORESTRACKINGDIMENSIONGROUPITEM on ECORESTRACKINGDIMENSIONGROUPITEM.ITEMID = inventtable.ITEMID and ECORESTRACKINGDIMENSIONGROUPITEM.ITEMDATAAREAID = inventtable.DATAAREAID
where ECORESTRACKINGDIMENSIONGROUPITEM.RECID is null
-Demo Live on SQLSAV01

30. Missing Storage Dimension Group
select
inventtable.ITEMID,
inventtable.NAMEALIAS,
inventtable.TCI_PLANNERCODEID,
inventtable.AMITEMMAJORGROUPID,
inventtable.DATAAREAID
from INVENTTABLE
left join ECORESSTORAGEDIMENSIONGROUPITEM on ECORESSTORAGEDIMENSIONGROUPITEM.ITEMID = inventtable.ITEMID and ECORESSTORAGEDIMENSIONGROUPITEM.ITEMDATAAREAID = inventtable.DATAAREAID
where ECORESSTORAGEDIMENSIONGROUPITEM.RECID is null
-Demo Live on SQLSAV01

31. Use X++ Enums in SQL(Easy Way)
The SRSANALYSISENUMS table will contain the labels for ENUMs in use by your Analysis projects.
Does not contain all Enums
select
PRODID
,PRODSTATUS
,SRSANALYSISENUMS.ENUMITEMLABEL
from PRODTABLE
join SRSANALYSISENUMS on PRODTABLE.PRODSTATUS = SRSANALYSISENUMS.ENUMITEMVALUE
and SRSANALYSISENUMS.ENUMNAME = 'ProdStatus'
and SRSANALYSISENUMS.LANGUAGEID = 'en-us'
-Demo Live in SQLSAV01

32. Day to Day activities

33. Daily Checks Drive Space Back-up status Back-Up validation
Index maintenance

34. Drive Space Data Files Log Files TempDB Continually grow
Data Management practices can control this
IDMF is Microsoft’s solution
Log Files
Relatively steady-state in size controlled by daily data volume and back-up frequency
TempDB
Very steady-state in size, should not regularly gro
Everyone is using separate drives for Data, Logs and TempDB?

35. Back-up Status / Validation
Most straight-forward method is to use SQL job to notify of status
Different validation for different backups
Example
Nightly Full - notifies on all conditions
Transaction Backup only on failure
Validation
Use Restore Verifyonly
If backup does NOT contain CheckSum then VerifyOnly will only confirm that the file is complete and restore attempt is possible
Using With CheckSu command on back-up to include CheckSum in the backup
Validate back by having a nightly data refresh

36. Index Maintenance
SQL includes a number of native tools for index maintenance
Rebuild re-creates the index
Re-Organize makes existing index’s more efficient
Both of these can be scheduled via SQL Agent jobs
This approach is not dynamic, and make not be practical
Tigercat uses SQLFool Index maintenance script
Automates re-indexing with a selectable priority
Logging
Restart
Highly Configurable

37. Scheduled Data Checking
Use SQL Job + sp_send_dbmail
Allows scheduled queries to send results via
Much Easier than creating a Batch Job in X++
Lower resource overhead depending on query
-Demo Live on SQLSAV01

38. Scheduled SQL Example if exists (
select * from TCI_AX2012R2_PROD.dbo.route
where ROUTEID = '' )
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail
@profile_name = 'Exchange',
@recipients =
@subject = 'Blank Route Issue',
@query =
N'select OPRID,
OPRNUM,
DATAAREAID,
RECID
from TCI_AX2012R2_PROD.dbo.route
where ROUTEID = ""',
@attach_query_result_as_file = 0

39. General SQL Query Tips(For AX)
Always add DataAreaID to join conditions
Pay Attention to query predicates and indexes
Note Extended Tables

40. Thank You Corey Vantilborg, Tigercat Industries
Twitter: @CoreyVantilborg
Please Remember to Fill our session surveys
#CollaborateCanada