Automatic Database Backup Of Golden Configuration Environment D365FO

In this article, I will talk about automated database backup of Golden Configuration Environment or any tier 1 or 2 cloud-hosted environments.
we will be using Azure DevOps and Azure storage for this.

Prerequisites

1. Must have an Azure DevOps organization
2. Must have an Azure subscription with a storage account

In this article, we will assume that our environment is stopped and we have to start it and create a backup and then stop again.
In summary, we will be creating an Azure DevOps pipeline that will run every day(this can be hanged), start the virtual machine then run a PowerShell script in the VM which will create a backup and store it in an Azure blob.

Steps

• Create a library on ADO (you can name it Database-Backup, we will be needing this name later), you can follow the official documentation
• Add the following keys
  • AZBackupServiceConnection - Storage Account service connection name (follow Official docs)
  • AZVMServiceConnection - Virtual Machine resource group service connection name
  • BlobContainer - Blob container name
  • DatabaseName - Database name (AXDb)
  • InstanceName - Database Instance (DEFAULT)
  • StorageAccount - Storage account name (where the backup file will store)
  • StorageAccountResourceGroup - storage account resource group (where the backup file will store)
  • VMName - D365 virtual machine name
  • VMResourceGroup - D365 virtual machine resource group name
• Create a new YAML file in your repository (for example pipeline-backup.yaml)
• Copy the YAML (you can find the YAML on GitHub)
• Create a PowerShell script file (database-backup.ps1, and copy the content from GitHub )
• Check-In the code, if you are creating this please push the code into the repository.
• Create a new pipeline on Azure DevOps (you can get more information on official documentation), while creating the pipeline select the YAML file you created.
• Almost done, now you can run and test your pipeline (If you face any issues, please create a discussion on GitHub)
• Now we will create a schedule, please note this can be done in two ways
  • Adding cron in the YAML, I personally don’t like this, each time I want to update the time I have to update the repository and raise a PR and then wait for approvals. you can follow the official docs for this.
  • Adding the cron on Azure DevOps pipeline settings (classic approach). To add a schedule please follow the official docs, Edit the pipeline, and then from top right menu click on trigger and create a schedule.
• Done.

Conclusion

I hope that you are able to achieve the task. if you face any issues please raise a QA on GitHub.

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Happy Coding,
Cheers ? Bis Bald