Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Architecture / AX 7.0 Architecture

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations cloud architecture contains all the elements that are common to all Microsoft cloud offerings, as described in Subscriptions, licenses, accounts, and tenants for Microsoft's cloud offerings. Beyond this, it also includes services that automate software deployment and provisioning, operational monitoring and reporting, and seamless application lifecycle management.

The cloud architecture for Finance and Operations consists of these conceptual areas:

• Subscription – A subscription to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (cloud) gives you an online cloud environment (or multiple environments) and experience.
• Licenses – Customers must purchase subscription licenses (SLs) for their organization, or for their affiliates' employees and on-site agents, vendors, or contractors who directly or indirectly access Finance and Operations. Finance and Operations is licensed through Microsoft Volume Licensing and the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program. For more information, download the latest Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide from Dynamics 365 pricing.
• Tenant – In Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AAD), a tenant represents an organization. It's a dedicated instance of the AAD service that an organization receives and owns when it creates a relationship with Microsoft (for example, by signing up for a Microsoft cloud service, such as Azure, Microsoft Intune, or Microsoft Office 365). Every AAD tenant is distinct and separate from other AAD tenants. For more information about AAD tenants, see How to get an Azure Active Directory Tenant.
  A tenant houses the company's user information. This information includes passwords, user profile data, permissions, and related information. The tenant also contains groups, applications, and other information that pertains to an organization and its security.
  The tenant is created when customers sign up for their first subscription to any Microsoft online service, such as Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or Azure. Any later subscriptions to the same online services or other online services can be grouped within the same tenant.
  An organization can have multiple AAD tenants. If there are multiple tenants, make sure that the subscriptions for Finance and Operations are associated with the correct tenant.
• Azure Active Directory (AAD) – AAD is the multi-tenant, cloud-based directory and identity management service from Microsoft that combines core directory services, application access management, and identity protection in a single solution. For more information, see Azure Active Directory. Finance and Operations uses AAD as the store for identity. Access to AAD is provided as part of a subscription to Finance and Operations.
• Office 365 admin center – Office 365 admin center is the subscription management portal that Office 365 provides for administrators. It's used to provide management functions for users (AAD) and subscriptions. As part of these management functions, it provides information about service health. For more information, see About the Office 365 admin center.
  Note

  You don't have to have an Office 365 license to deploy Finance and Operations. However, you might require a license for specific Office integration scenarios. For more information, see Office integration.
• Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) – LCS is a collaboration portal that provides an environment and a set of regularly updated services that can help you manage the application lifecycle of your Finance and Operations implementations. For more information, see Lifecycle Services for Finance and Operations. After you purchase and activate a subscription to Finance and Operations, an Implementation project workspace is provisioned in LCS when the tenant administrator signs in for the first time.
  Note

  An implementation project is an LCS project for the Microsoft-managed Finance and Operations cloud service. As a Microsoft partner, you can also provision non-implementation LCS projects for your own purposes. For more information, see Lifecycle Services for Finance and Operations partners.
• Finance and Operations – Finance and Operations is deployed through LCS. Various topologies are available: development/test/build, acceptance test, performance test, and high-availability production. For more information about the various topologies, download the latest Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide from Dynamics 365 pricing.
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) – VSTS is used primarily for code version control and to deploy a build environment. VSTS is also used to track support incidents, such as work items in VSTS that are submitted to Microsoft through Cloud powered support, and to integrate the Business process modeler (BPM) library hierarchy into your VSTS project as a hierarchy of work items. VSTS is also used during code upgrade.

"Under the hood," Finance and Operations uses many features of the Azure platform, such as Azure Storage, networking, monitoring, and Azure SQL Database, to name just a few. Shared services put into operation and orchestrate the application lifecycle of the environments for participants. Together, Azure functionality and LCS offer a robust cloud service.