Announcement: Support for unlimited number of Production & Sandbox coming soon!!

ANNOUNCEMENT:

September 1st, 2020 Microsoft has informed the existing Business Central customers through their Admin Center with the below message.

Microsoft will be updating the Release Plan, Licensing Guide, and CSP Pricelist by 7th September 2020.

Link to Release Plan

 

Value Proposition:

• As you know that the maximum of 3 Production Environment can be created, Microsoft has decided to provide the option of adding unlimited Production Environments. These Production Environments can be purchased through CSP separately.
  
  
• Along with these Production Environments how many Sandbox environments will be available is NOT YET FIXED. Tentatively this ratio is for every 1 Production there will be 3 Sandboxes available.
  
  
• Also, as per my understanding, the Database Space(80 GB) is allocated separately for Production and Sandbox. Hence, the 80 GB size will be shared between multiple Production and similarly for Sandbox as well.
  
  
• With every Production Environment extra 4GB Database Capacity will be added. It is not clear if this applies to Production Only or Sandbox as well.

Questions:

• How is the Database Capacity actually shared between different Production and Sandbox Environments?

• Will requesting additional Database Capacity increase the size in Sandbox as well?

• Can multiple subscriptions be used in multiple environments? For Instance US Production with Premium Subscription and UAE Production with Essentials?

• Will the Database Capacity be allocated in a fixed manner or dynamically as required by the environment?

Message to existing customers:

 

With the 2020 release wave 2, we're introducing the ability for customers to buy additional Business Central production environments to expand their business. More environments will open up new opportunities like creating more business branches, moving into more countries, or expanding within their current country.

Every new Business Central customer with Business Central Premium or Essential subscriptions will be able to use 1 production environment and 3 sandbox environments, at no extra charge. Customers can then choose to purchase an unlimited number of additional production environments, if needed, via their CSP partner. Each additional production environment comes with 3 additional sandbox environments and 4 GB of extra database capacity. Production and sandbox environments can be created and used in any country where Business Central service is available. Additional environments can be created by the customers via the Business Central Admin Center.

Existing customers with Business Central Essentials or Premium subscriptions purchased before October 1st 2020 will keep their existing environment entitlements for a period of 1 year until October 1st 2021, or until their subscription is renewed or ended, whichever occurs latest. This won't increase their overall database storage capacity and will not enable extra sandbox environments. These benefits are only activated with the production environments purchased by the customers separately.

Conclusion:

Kindly feel free to add the questions in the comments below. I will write a followup update once the details are clear from Microsoft.