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[Zvika Rimalt]

A question to D365 users out there.

In order to open a support ticket with Microsoft, they usually require you to show them how to re-create the issue using a vanilla environment (not customized), using demo data (the “Contoso” data set).

In the new brave world of Azure, it seems this requires keeping a box dedicated to this purpose, which costs many $1000’s a year.
How did you address the need to have available, post go live, a box with demo data?
Did you find a more cost effective way to do that?
Or are you managing to open support tickets without using demo data at all?

From my experience it used to be VERY difficult (AKA nearly impossible) to get support people to accept a bug report unless you could show them how to  replicate it on the Contoso data).

Zvika

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Zvika Rimalt
Functional Consultant
Vancouver BC
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[Andrew Friebel]

I believe when the cloud hosted environments are in a stopped status, then you are not charged for it while it’s stopped.  That’s my understanding at least.  Based on that assumption, then you should be able to spin up a vanilla cloud hosted environment and only have it on when you need it.  That should help reduce the costs.

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Andrew Friebel
Gale Pacific
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[Steeve Gilbert]

Like Andrew said, if you stop the env you will not be charge for processing time.  You will stil be charged for storage of the env, which is very little compared to letting the VM running.

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Steeve Gilbert [Designation]
Software Development Supervisor
Boa-Franc S.E.N.C.
QC, Canada
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[André Arnaud de Calavon]

HI Zvika,

When we have an issue at our customer, we check it on a local machine or deploy a cloud hosted environment at that time. Then also we validate the latest available version. Then we can help this customer in this way. A customer can also deploy a machine when required and delete afterwards. Disadvantage here is that it might take some time to redeploy a standard environment. 
When the machine is stopped, you don’t pay for the computing hours, but still a small amount for storage.

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kind regards,

André Arnaud de Calavon [Designation]
Kaya Consulting
The Netherlands
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[Scott Morley]

If you are concerned about people forgetting to stop (deallocate) the environment you can use PowerShell to automate the shutdown. To avoid compute charges to have to stop the environment from with LCS or the Azure portal. The compute charges will still add up if you just do a shutdown in Windows. To make sure you can look in the Azure portal and the VM will show a status of stopped (deallocated). If it just shows stopped, it is still racking up charges.

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Scott Morley
Principal Application Architect
OneNeck IT Solutions
Bend OR
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[Kaare Boraas]

We’re doing a lot of custom development.  We keep a vanilla VM with the latest version/updates and Contoso data so we can test the new native functionality.  There is a cost, but we find it useful.  To save $, you can turn off the VM when you’re not using it and turn it on when you need it.  Depending on your Azure tenant, you should only have to pay for the time it is running plus a small amount of the disk space.
K.

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Kaare Boraas
Solution Delivery Manager
PCL Constructors Inc.
Edmonton AB
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[Kimberly Hopkins]

?Zvika,

D365 Support issues are submitted in LCS. 

Prior to submitting your Support request, you are required to do an Issue Search to see if there is an issue already out there with resolutions available. 

You are required to indicate in which environment your problem exists, then you are asked if it can be replicated in other environments and to provide the steps to recreate the issue.  They do not require you to replicate your issue on Demo data.

Hope this helps!

#Unified Operations
?

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Kimberly Hopkins
BKD Technologies
Indianapolis IN
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[Dave Phillips]

Hi – 

Let me provide an insider’s perspective to this conversation.

First, as noted earlier, make sure noncritical Azure environments are Stopped with Deallocation (of resources such as NICS). You can end up with a hefty surprise by not Deallocating.

MSFT asks for a vanilla (Contoso data) reproduction in a ticket to save everyone time. The goal of this request is to help direct work to the correct party the first time and, if you can reproduce an issue in Contoso, we know that party is MSFT. Put another way, MSFT does not have source code for ISV solutions, other custom code, raw data for migrations, etc. and that support work needs to be directed back to the contracted party.

With your Contoso reproduction (and it goes without saying the better these are documented the faster the outcome) we can rapidly confirm and take action. Additionally, nearly all of the work done by MSFT support developers (code fixes) is done in Contoso. Contoso is the happy path straight from your environment, to MSFT support, to MSFT support developers coding fixes.

Unfortunately, at MSFT we still see customizations appear in our customer/partner work. The result is we’ll make a data request, strip out all modifications, find we have no reproduction, and ship the issue back. That represents time that could be spent on other important customer and partner work.

Also noted earlier, you can check for prior reports in LCS. These are not only KBs (fixes) but there are also entries that help explain why the software is behaving in a certain way. You can also search LCS using object names such as found in classes.

I’ve attached an example (early AX 6.0) of what good documentation look like.

Thanks….Dave

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Dave Phillips
Sr Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft
Fargo ND
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[Brian Parker]

Bear in mind that you can spin up a vanilla “onebox” development VM with Contoso data just about anywhere you can run Hyper-V.

This can get time consuming if you don’t know how, or if you need to download your codebase, or you need your own data… but since you WANT a vanilla environment for this, it’s an easy way to get one.

That said, we’ve been reporting a number of bugs, and haven’t generally needed to reproduce with Contoso data. As long as we can provide details steps that reliably reproduce the problem, it’s been okay for us.

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Brian Parker
Developer
Czarnowski
Pittsburgh PA
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