Business Central Sandbox creation

Question

We need a Business Central sandbox environment for developing & testing.

We have a MS account number and we are an LS CENTRAL authorized partner

Answer 1

Hi @Tolis Lanaras

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Based on the information you shared, I understand that you need a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central sandbox environment for development and testing, and that your organization already has a Microsoft account number and is an authorized LS Central partner.

After reviewing the available documentation, there are a few ways partners typically obtain or configure a Business Central sandbox environment. You may want to review the following guidance:

https://community.dynamics.com/blogs/post/?postid=fe9285b9-65ec-ee11-a73d-6045bdb143c2

Sandbox Environments in Business Central

Create more sandbox environments with partner sandbox licenses

As a moderator, my ability to assist with account-specific issues is limited, as I do not have access to the necessary internal tools, especially concerning matters of privacy. To provide you with more expert insights and the best possible support for issues, I highly recommend posting on the official Microsoft Dynamics 365 Community forum. It is a very active community monitored by Dynamics experts and engineers who specialize in these types of complex issues.

Thank you for your understanding.

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Answer 2

A Business Central sandbox can be created from the Business Central administration center. As an LS Central authorized partner with a Microsoft account/tenant, use one of these options depending on what is already licensed:

1. Use the free sandbox quota on an existing Business Central subscription

• Premium and Essential Business Central subscriptions include one production and three sandbox environments at no extra charge.
• As an administrator, go to the Business Central administration center for the tenant.
• In the left navigation, select Environments and choose New.
• In Create Environment:
  • Enter a name.
  • Set Environment Type to Sandbox.
  • Select the appropriate Country and version.
• Finish the wizard to provision the sandbox. It will be isolated from production and can be used for development and testing.

2. Create a sandbox for a tenant that only has a trial

• Trials also support sandboxes.
• Ask the Business Central admin on that tenant to open the Business Central administration center and create a new Sandbox environment as above.
• By default, sandboxes created this way contain demo data (CRONUS) and no production data.

3. Use Partner Sandbox licenses for more/larger dev/test/demo needs

• As a partner, it is possible to purchase the Dynamics 365 Business Central Partner Sandbox license (requires a valid MPN ID).
• The first pack of five Partner Sandbox licenses gives a quota of 1 production + 3 sandbox environments on that partner tenant; each additional pack of five adds three more sandboxes.
• These environments are strictly non‑production and must stay in the partner tenant.
• After the licenses are active, use the Business Central administration center on the partner tenant to create additional Sandbox environments as needed.

4. Alternative: trial-based test customer tenants

• If CSP access is available, a separate test customer tenant can be created with a Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium Trial subscription (30 days, 25 Premium licenses).
• After creating the test customer and assigning a license, open the Business Central administration center for that tenant and create production/sandbox environments there for testing and demos.

For development scenarios, sandboxes are recommended because:

• They allow attaching Visual Studio Code and publishing/debugging AL extensions directly.
• Outbound HTTP calls from extensions are blocked by default and must be explicitly enabled per extension via Extension Management → Configure → Allow HttpClient Requests.

If more environments are needed beyond the included quota, additional production environments can be purchased through the CSP channel; each additional production environment adds three more sandbox environments and extra database capacity.

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References:

• Sandbox Environments in Business Central
• Sandbox environments for Business Central development
• Production and sandbox environments
• Prepare demonstration environments of Business Central
• Preparing test environments of Dynamics 365 Business Central
• Managing production and sandbox environments in the admin center
• Business Central trials and subscriptions