Enables businesses achieve greater efficiency by sharing data and processes Shared application data across legal entities – Party, Location, Products, … Shared services across legal entities – Procurement, Centralized Payments, …

Managing shared data – Requires centralized business processes Shared services – not managed centrally across all legal entities Separate AX instances – increased management overhead and TCO

Empower holding company subsidiaries Share IT infrastructure across independent businessesAchieve strict data isolation across businessesReduce TCO for managing IT infrastructure

Metadata is common across partitions No partition specific customizations The same application code runs in all partitions License and Configuration Keys are shared across partitions Enabling or disabling a configuration key affects all partitions Named user licenses are calculated per principal, i.e. AD User, regardless of the number of partitions they have access to Default Partition and Company A default partition named “Initial” is always created for each AX instance The DAT company exists in every partition. It is automatically created when a new partition is created. A company with the same name can exist in multiple partitions

AX Users are defined per- partition Within a partition a principal can be associated with one AX user Each user has a “default” partition associated with them The principal that creates a new partition automatically becomes the ‘Admin’ user in that partition AX user IDs other than Admin and Guest are unique across partitions Role definitions are shared across partitions User to Role assignments are per-partition Organizations (e.g. departments, cost centers, etc.) and hierarchies are defined within a partition User-Role-Organization assignment is per-partition Users are only allowed to log into partitions that they have access to Intended partition is specified at session creation time via client configuration If no partition is specified then the user’s default partition is chosen

Per Company tablePer Partition tableShared table (System-only)

where dataareaid = Company5 and Partition = 789

Batch Framework Shared across partitions Batch jobs are associated with a partition Batch server executes jobs in the proper partition context Batch servers can process jobs for all partitions Application Integration Framework Managed centrally for all partitions Ports can be restricted to a single partition Partition context can also be provided for each inbound message Service definitions are shared across partitions Enterprise Portal EP site shared across all partitions Default behavior is that the user’s default partition is chosen to log in to Query parameter in the URL can be used to log into a non- default partition Workflow Workflow metadata is shared across partitions Workflows are saved within a partition Workflow batch jobs and runtimes should be configured per partition BC.NET Partition is a parameter for logon Default partition for the user is chosen if non specified Client configuration for BC.NET has partition field similar to the interactive client

Source Version Upgrade all source companies into a single data partition on Dynamics AX 2012 R2 Upgrade source companies into multiple data partitions on Dynamics AX 2012 R2 Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R1