Journey To: Business Central

How much I am struggling to install BC on my machine to start development is one good story and could be follow up guide for a newbie. I am still doing my development work on Microsoft Dynamics NAV Development Environment using C-SIDE or C\AL Programming language. On recent April release from Microsoft, they announced that they are going to replace C\AL by AL programming language in October Release. So I decided to take this new path towards BC.

How I started?

I searched for "development in Business Central" or  "Starting AL programming". After going through some link I found some useful link to start the development.

1. https://github.com/Microsoft/AL
2. Getting Started with AL
3. AL Development Environment

I found that we have to use a sandbox environment for development. I choose my Dynamics 365 Business Central Development Sandbox Environment. I planned to use the container-based image hosted locally. There are other options available such as:

1. run a sandbox environment deployed as a Dynamics 365 Business Central service
2. run a container-based image hosted on Azure Virtual Machine
3. run a container-based image hosted locally

Follow this link to know detail about available sandbox options

PS. sandbox meaning: a virtual space in which new or untested software can be run securely. To know more what is sandbox follow this link(what is sandbox?)

Next Step on journey to Business Central

After I decided to install business central locally, I must install Docker to run the image. When I follow the link I got a message in first as "If not already done, install Docker".
Setup Local-hosted container sandbox for Business Central

So I have to install Docker. At that point, I was using Windows 10 Home edition and I came to know that I could not install docker, I need to install docker toolbox. I found a link to install docker toolbox as well as to enable virtualization in windows 10 home. So first enable virtualization and then install docker toolbox.

1. Enable Virtualization in windows 10 home
2. Install docker toolbox on windows 10 home

At this point, everything seems working with lots of research and crawling on my knees. 😅😎😁

Then I opened business central (https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/ ) and searched for sandbox and downloaded it locally.

Documented in these images:

1. search sandbox on BC and select container sandbox environment

2. select host locally, then it promote for download accept and it will be downloaded in name as CreateBCSandbox.ps1

3. BCSandbox script opened on power-shell, we should have to change values here and execute it

When I followed upto step 9 from link (Setup sandbox environment locally) , I got an error. I realized it was may be because of Windows 10 home. So I decided to use windows 10 Pro.

I just change the key to upgrade my windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro.  To upgrade you need to get windows 10 pro key and to be in safe side, take backup. Follow the steps explain in the video:
Upgrade windows 10 home to windows 10 Pro

Upgrade hardly took 10 minutes, after the upgrade was completed I uninstalled Docker toolbox immediately and I removed Oracle virtual machine which was installed during installation of Docker toolbox.

  Then I enable Hyper-v manager.

1. Press windows key and search "Turn Windows features on or off"
2. It open windows feature page, check all hyper-v on the page

Install Docker for Windows:

Then I downloaded docker from official docker site. For me, the best option is to register in docker hub (https://hub.docker.com/) and from docker hub I could download the Docker. Alternatively, you can download using the following link:

1. Download Docker for windows - Stable CE (DIRECTLY)
2. Download Docker for windows - Community Edition (need to register)

After the download is completed, click on the Docker Desktop Installer.exe file and install it. Follow the wizard to complete the installation. Please make sure to give all the permission. You can make it "windows container" now or later. For development you need "windows container".

Go to search and click the Docker Desktop, then the docker will start. It will take some time to start docker completely. It will give you notification once it is done. At this moment, you have an option to go to Hyper-V manager to see the list of Virtual Machine and in the list you will see MobyLinuxVM. 

View of Docker on Hyper-V manager

After docker was started, I logged in Docker hub. Then went to command prompt and typed the command docker and again I ran into an error saying
"could not read CA certificate "C:\\Users\\...\\.docker\\machine\\machines\\default\\ca.pem": open C:\Users\...\.docker\machine\machines\default\ca.pem: The system cannot find the path specified."

This error was surely caused because of Docker toolbox which we installed for windows 10 home. Then I followed the link https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49679818/docker-could-not-read-ca-certificate and resolved the issue.

At this point, I just installed docker in windows machine. Next will be the installation of Business Central (BC) on it.

--------- update July 2020

I recently found a video by Saurav really helpful for installing docker.