Week 3 of 8
Environments and refresh
A Finance and Operations subscription comes with one Tier 2 sandbox. Microsoft’s own plan puts performance testing on Tier 4 or 5 and says Tier 2 or 3 typically cannot model a real concurrent workload. Business Central includes three sandboxes, but they run on a different performance tier from production.
Copies matter too. When Business Central copies production to a sandbox it stops the job queue, turns off agents, disables integrations and blocks outbound calls from extensions. And F&O administration is moving from Lifecycle Services to the Power Platform admin center, where a "database refresh" becomes a "copy" that brings code with it.
This week: give every environment a purpose and a refresh rule
- List every environment: tier or type, purpose (SIT, UAT, data migration, performance, training, golden configuration), owner and refresh frequency.
- Move performance testing off Tier 2. Budget a Tier 4 or 5 sandbox (F&O) or a production-type environment (Business Central) now.
- Write a post-copy checklist: which integrations, job queue entries and outbound calls you re-enable for testing, and which stay off.
- If you still rely on LCS, find out what your test assets depend on there: Business process modeler libraries, Task recorder files, RSAT certificates.
Number of the week
Tier 4 or 5
is the sandbox size Microsoft’s implementation guide assigns to performance testing for finance and operations apps.
Source: Microsoft Learn, environment strategy guidanceUse this week
- Test Schedule & Cycle Calendar →
Every cycle, refresh and freeze in one calendar, so a sandbox copy never lands mid-cycle.
- Microsoft: unified admin experience for finance and operations apps →
What changes when environments move from LCS to the Power Platform admin center.
Next week: the data you load is under test too. Data entities, staging tables and reconciliation.
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