Managing Environments¶

This page explains how to manage your Business Central environments — production and sandbox — including creating, copying, updating, and monitoring storage capacity.

Production vs. Sandbox¶

Business Central offers two types of environments:

	Production	Sandbox
Purpose	Live business operations with real data	Testing, training, development, and experimenting
Data	Real business data	Can be empty or a copy of production data
Included in license	1 production environment	3 sandbox environments (can purchase additional)
Updates	Scheduled by Microsoft with a configurable update window	Updated before production (gives you early preview)
Extensions	Only from AppSource or by admin	AppSource + direct upload of custom extensions
Risk	Changes affect live business	Safe to experiment — no impact on production

When to use a sandbox

Always test configuration changes, new extensions, and permission set adjustments in a sandbox first. Restoring a broken production environment is costly and time-consuming.

Creating a sandbox environment¶

Open the Business Central Administration Center
Select Environments in the left menu
Click New → Environment
Fill in:
- Environment Name — a descriptive name (e.g. Sandbox-Testing, Sandbox-Training)
- Type — select Sandbox
- Country — the localization for the environment
- Version — typically the latest available version
Click Create

The environment will be provisioned within a few minutes with demo data.

Copying an environment¶

Copying your production environment to a sandbox is useful for testing with real data.

Open the Business Central Administration Center
Select Environments in the left menu
Click Copy (or select the source environment and use the Copy action)
Fill in:
- Source environment — the environment to copy from
- Target environment type — typically Sandbox
- New environment name — a descriptive name for the copy
Click Copy

What gets copied and what gets disabled

Everything is copied — all business data, configuration, custom permission sets, installed extensions, email configuration, integrations, etc. However, some features are automatically disabled in the copy to prevent unintended side effects:

Job Queue entries — disabled to prevent accidental emails, postings, or data modifications
Allow external web service calls — disabled to prevent the copy from communicating with external systems

You must manually re-enable these in the sandbox after verifying it is safe to do so.

Data sensitivity

The sandbox copy contains real business data (customer names, financial data, etc.). Ensure that only authorized users have access to the sandbox environment. Apply appropriate security groups (see Managing Permissions and Security Groups).

Deleting a sandbox environment¶

Open the Administration Center → Environments
Select the sandbox environment
Click Delete
Confirm the deletion

Note

Deleted environments can be recovered within 7 days. After that, they are permanently removed.

Managing update windows¶

Microsoft releases major updates to Business Central twice a year (typically April and October) and minor updates monthly. You can control when these updates are applied.

Setting the update date and update window¶

The update date and update window are two separate settings:

Update date — controls which day an update is applied. You can schedule or postpone it within the allowed range.
Update window — controls what time of day any update is applied. Choose a time frame with low user activity (e.g. early morning or late evening).

To configure them:

Open the Administration Center → Environments → select an environment
Go to Update Settings
Set the Preferred update date for the next available update
Set the Update window (time range) separately — this applies to all updates

Update behavior¶

Sandbox environments are updated first, typically 7 days before production. This gives you time to test.
Production environments are updated on or after your preferred date within the update window.
If a critical issue is found during sandbox testing, you can reschedule the production update.

Best practice for update management

Let the sandbox update automatically
Test critical business processes in the sandbox after the update
Check if installed extensions work correctly
If everything is fine, let the production update proceed
If issues are found, contact your partner before the production update date

Scheduling a specific date¶

You can delay an update by up to a certain window (Microsoft defines the maximum delay). To do so:

Go to Environments → select the environment → Update Settings
Set the Preferred update date to the latest date you're comfortable with

Storage capacity monitoring¶

Each Business Central tenant has a storage quota based on the number of licensed users and environments.

Capacity is a soft limit

The licensed capacity is a soft limit — exceeding it does not affect existing environments or their functionality. The only restriction is that the administrator cannot create a new environment until the actual usage drops back below the licensed capacity (even by a small amount).

Checking your storage usage¶

Open the Administration Center
Go to Capacity in the left menu
Review the storage usage per environment and the total vs. available capacity for your tenant

What to do when running low on storage¶

Archive old data — use data retention policies or archive historical transactions
Clean up log entries — change log entries, job queue log entries, and activity log entries can consume significant space
Remove unused companies — empty or test companies still consume storage
Review attached files — large file attachments on records consume storage
Purchase additional capacity — contact your partner if you need more