Performance issues in a complex system like Dynamics AX are not always easy to identify.
You might think that this is safely in the hands of your IT team, however most performance problems relate in some way to data – the data that you need to keep your business humming.
Knowing how it connects to problems with your Dynamics AX performance ensures you can protect the data you need the most. Here are the most common causes that might be slowing your system down:
1. Old data is causing new problems
For companies who have funnelled many years’ worth of transactions and data through AX, neglecting SQL maintenance is similar to running a marathon.
You start out at peak performance, but over time you get slower and slower. The same thing happens if you don’t routinely maintain your SQL Server.
A SQL Server manages and stores information such as your sales transactions. Over time data builds up, configuring your SQL Server and optimizing how this data is stored means you can avoid your Dynamics AX slowing down.
2. The table of contents is muddled
As with any technology, components of your ERP occasionally decide to take the day off without telling anyone and stop working the way they should.
This can cause AX to run slowly but not stop you from using it entirely.
For example, reports that are normally sorted by a particular field have now begun showing the data in a more random order. Optimizing your SQL server means re-building your indexes (think a table of contents in a book) to fix the reporting issue and improve the performance of your system.
3. You’re running out of memory
If you are regularly seeing memory issues, it could mean that your table caching is not appropriate for the number of records in the tables.
This can occur when your go-live settings become insufficient because your business has gone through a huge amount of growth since you started using the system.
4. Your infrastructure isn’t keeping up
As your company grows, so should your technology infrastructure. If Dynamics AX is running slowly, it could mean that you have increased the number of users and the workload you’ve placed on it without increasing the infrastructure to manage the growth.
Load testing can put your system through its paces and allow you to gauge the amount of headroom you have for growth.
5. There is some badly behaving code customisations
While your Dynamics AX platform may be scalable, often you will have made some customisations to the code to fit with your unique business processes.
However custom code can often introduce performance issues, especially if you have gone through an upgrade and the customisations weren’t migrated correctly (or at all in some cases).
Code analysers allow you to quickly identify code inefficiencies and apply changes for compliance with Microsoft and industry standards.
6. Wrong caching leads to unnecessary database calls
Caching reduces data access times and latency.
Not using caching properly is the first root cause for performance. It would be like leaving your lunch at home and going all the way back to get it when you want to eat. You waste time going to get it when you could have brought it to work and reduced the time it takes to retrieve your lunch.
Wrong caching leads to unnecessary database calls causing longer access times and increased latency.
