Dynamics AX Load Balancing tips

Working with Single AOS environment and Load balanced environment is very different. Specially, when it comes to releasing code in production environment or making changes in AIF service data policies. Following are few things which I learnt in my recent project:

1. If running multiple AOSs for load balancing and you need to make data policy changes (i-e need to enable or disable fields in a web service), you must bring all AOSs down and restart the service when change is made and CIL is performed.
2. If running multiple AOSs and made some code change that needs CIL change. Again, must bring all AOSs down and restart them when change is made to make the change effective in all environments (servers)
3. If running multiple AOSs and modified workflow (i-e a new workflow version is added), Must refresh cache in all other environments. You don't need to bring production environment down for that purpose and just login to all servers and refresh the cache (Tools > Cache > Refresh AOD, data, dictionary)
4. If you are using load balancing and you have written custom .net API which calls AIF services. The custom .Net API MUST be deployed on physical cluster and not the load balanced one. Otherwise, it won't be able to authenticate and you will get NTLM authentication error.

I will keep updating this post as I find and learn more. 

AX 2012 upload file to FTP with batch processing support

One of a very common requirements for any ERP systems is to have FTP file upload support to upload files from AX to FTP server. We do have many libraries, tools available to do that. However, it is best to have native X++ code without referencing any DLLs to upload your files to FTP from AX. Following code shows the example of uploading files to FTP.

The code written below can be easily used to upload files, However, if you have to process this as a batch you need to consider that batch runs on server/CIL and for this you need to set permissions and also if that still doesn't work, you can change the method to static server.

private server static void sendToFTP()

{

    System.Object ftpo;

    System.Object ftpResponse;

    System.Net.FtpWebRequest request;

    System.IO.StreamReader reader;

    System.IO.Stream requestStream;

    System.Byte[] bytes;

    

    System.Text.Encoding utf8;

    System.Net.FtpWebResponse response;

    System.Object credential;

    HOSInventParameters hosInventParameters;

    int             fileCount;

    System.Array    files;

    int             i;

    str             nextFile;

    Filename        filepath;

    Filename        fileType,fileNameString;

    FileNameType    pattern = '*.TXT';

    FileName        ftpFileName,fileName;

    select firstOnly custInventParameters;

    new InteropPermission(InteropKind::ClrInterop).assert();

    files           = System.IO.Directory::GetFiles(custInventParameters.PartsFileLocation, pattern);

    if (files)

    {

        fileCount =    files.get_Length();

        for(i=0; i < fileCount; i++)

        {

            nextFile    = files.GetValue(i);

            [filepath, filename, fileType] = fileNameSplit(nextFile);

            fileNameString= filename + fileType;

            ftpFileName = custInventParameters.PartsFTPAddress + '/' + custInventParameters.PartsFTPLocation + '/' + fileNameString;

            reader = new System.IO.StreamReader(nextFile);

            utf8 = System.Text.Encoding::get_UTF8();

            bytes = utf8.GetBytes( reader.ReadToEnd() );

            reader.Close();

            // little workaround to get around the casting in .NET

            ftpo = System.Net.WebRequest::Create(ftpFileName);

            request = ftpo;

            credential = new System.Net.NetworkCredential(custInventParameters.PartsUserId,custInventParameters.PartsFTPPassword);

            request.set_Credentials(credential);

            request.set_ContentLength(bytes.get_Length());

            request.set_Method('STOR');

            // "Bypass" a HTTP Proxy (FTP transfer through a proxy causes an exception)

            // request.set_Proxy( System.Net.GlobalProxySelection::GetEmptyWebProxy() );

            requestStream = request.GetRequestStream();

            requestStream.Write(bytes,0,bytes.get_Length());

            requestStream.Close();

            ftpResponse = request.GetResponse();

            response = ftpResponse;

            info(response.get_StatusDescription());

        }

    }

    CodeAccessPermission::revertAssert();

}