Microsoft Dynamics NAV Infrastrcture Sizing Guidelines for On-Premises Single Tenant Deployments
The sizing and performance recommendations are very specific to the scenarios performed. Many factors influence sizing recommendations and application performance:
- Usage patterns such as the mixture of transactional and consulting scenarios.
- The number of users who carry out the same tasks at the same time, which results in locking delays.
- How the solution is customized from the standard Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution provided by Microsoft.
- The amount of data in the Microsoft SQL Server database.
- How optimized the underlying database is for the transactional and consulting scenarios.
- The underlying software, hardware and network infrastructure.
- Other applications running in the same environment.
Sizing Recommendations Summary
This recommendation is possible to run 500 concurrent users, each executing up to 90 transactions per hour on a single Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instance with 16 GB of RAM and a Quad Core Processor at 2.45 GHz. To determine the resource requirements we compared four Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server configurations with the same workload.
| Configuration | CPU (2.45 GHz) | RAM |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 Cores | 16 GB |
| 2 | 4 Cores | 6 GB |
| 3 | 2 Cores | 6 GB |
| 4 (2 NAV Server) | 2 Cores | 2 X 6 GB |
Our recommendations for sizing Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server for single tenant on-premises usage are:
- Up to 150 users per CPU core on each Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instance
- Minimum 5 MB memory per active user on each Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instance
Memory Requirements
At the peak load of 500 concurrent users the memory consumed by the Dynamics NAV Server process might be around 4 GB. Each user session that connects to a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server has calculated to need approximately 5 MB of RAM per user, this takes into account the operating system and initial server memory requirements.
| Windows Server 2012 R2 Initial Memory | 1.5 GB |
| Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server Initial Memory | 0.5 GB |
| Estimated Peak Memory Use for 500 User Sessions | 2.5 GB |
| Total Memory used at 500 User Session | 4.5 GB |
|---|
The need of processor cores versus memory
A rule of thumb for sizing is that each processor core is capable of handling up to 150 users at the loads described.
Load Test Tools
We also want to recommend the load test using Visual Studio Load Test with a Test Controller and four Load Test Agents. Test Response times and performance counters are collected by the Visual Studio Load Test framework.
The test client simulates user actions by calling UI Web Services methods in the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client. Each Test Client has its own Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client process. The Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web Server components use the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Client Framework that is used by the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client and Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows client.