Recently I’ve come over a scenario where docker is chosen to easily spin up demo environments for Dynamics NAV, tailored for different user cases, different customer industries and solutions. While docker is the preferred option here because it offers advantages such as portability and rapid deployment, it is primarily a tool for dev-ops.

The ease of configuration and management of containers is relative to how tech-savvy people are, and we needed to bridge the gap between the flexible powershell deployment used by developers and a user-friendly interface that anyone else would want to work with. Mind you, we are talking about different scenarios here, where some may require custom database, others need third-party .net solutions and so on, and all need to occasionally make smaller configuration changes once the container is created. For example, completing the Excel add-in registration. So, mainly scenarios that cannot be easily covered by Azure Container Instances and that users wanted to have provided ad-hoc. To retain flexibility for the users, while keeping them out of the docker-sphere, we decided to go with Azure Automation Runbooks and Custom Script Extensions.  Continue reading “User-friendly deployment using docker” →