MSDYN365BC - Why Dockers are important?

Hi Readers,

Hope you all are doing good.

I have been busy with recording some videos about Business Central and Docker.

I this article I would like to talk about Importance of Docker with Dynamics NAV / Business Central as developer.

Docker Playlist.

#Msdyn365bc, #docker, #businesscentral

Let's start with why dockers are important for us as developers.

Microsoft is very aggressively moving toward future with Business Central which is so interesting at least for me. But at the same time we all know this reality that we will have customers using Business Central on-Prem release and or Dynamics NAV.

What Does that Mean?

We will have customers in different versions like there are few customers in - NAV 2018, Business Central 14, Business Central 15 & Business Central 16.

We still do it then why you should we use docker?

As we all know Starting Business Central 15 and higher there is no C/AL Environment.

What that means?

Till Business Central 14 if we have to develop a customization for customer or Merging for a upgrade we just needed finsql and objects. We don't need to install the product and can work on multiple Dynamics NAV Version.

What Changed?

With Business Central for developing a custom Extension for our customer we need to have product Installed.

As to start developing extension we need to connect to Service for downloading symbol for base app or ISV that customer is using.

Now think about You have 5 customer with following versions - 14.5, 15.1, 15.6 ,16.1 & 16.2

You cannot have multiple versions installed on one machine and that will be a problem during extension development.

So How we solve this?

Dockers provides us a complete solution for this situation.

When we use dockers you can create Virtual Machines for Different versions of Product.

Dockers are not Virtual Machine.

The Main Difference is - Under a VM environment, each workload needs a complete OS. But with a container environment, multiple workloads can run with 1 OS. The bigger the OS footprint, the more environment benefits from containers.

Docker will not only create Virtual machine with windows but additionally install Dynamics NAV or Business Central Version that you need.

From Which version we can use Docker?

Microsoft started supporting docker from Dynamics NAV 2016.

Where I can actually Start If I haven't started yet?

I have been spending time to record some videos about Dockers. So you can check YouTube channel here. (Playlist - Docker)

I am open for questions and suggestions and based on your suggestion I can try to add more videos on this series.