Reporting activities will generate workload on different Microsoft Dynamics AX components in your infrastructure. Consider the impact of the following on your primary database:

• Standard reports are processed on the AOS server and access the primary database to get required data.

• The process of generating report models can consume memory and CPU resources on the database server. You generate report models during the initial setup and then generate report models only when your perspectives change.

• Processing of the OLAP cubes accesses your primary database to get required data.

• Transactional ad hoc reports access the primary database, unless the database is replicated.

• Production reports are processed on the AOS server and access the primary database to get required data.

• Any drill-through reports using Reporting Services access the primary database. Drill-through reports allow users to drill through to additional data in another report.

Consider the impact of the following on your AOS server:

• Reporting Services interacts with the AOS for production reports that are created using Microsoft Visual Studio.

• Standard reports are processed by the AOS and use the primary Microsoft Dynamics AX database.

Consider the impact of the following on your server infrastructure:

• The workload generated by Reporting Services, which stores all report definitions and Semantic Model Definition Language (SMDL) models in the Reporting Services database. This is a separate database from the primary database and can be stored on the same SQL Server host or on a dedicated host.

• The workload generated by Reporting Services on the IIS server or IIS farm based on reporting requests processed.

• The workload generated on the Analysis Services server based on the analytical requests processed.

• The workload analysis discussed in the preceding section will help you determine the topology for reporting extensions and analysis extensions. Consider the following questions when planning your system topology:

• How many Reporting Services instances will be required for processing reporting and business analysis requirements and the resulting IIS infrastructure?

  You can deploy Reporting Services on a dedicated IIS server or an IIS farm or share the IIS infrastructure with other Microsoft Dynamics AX components such as Workflow, Enterprise Portal, and the Application Integration Framework (AIF) Web services. We recommend a dedicated IIS server or a dedicated IIS farm for Reporting Services deployment.

• Will you need to replicate the Microsoft Dynamics AX database and use the replicated database for Reporting Services?

  We recommend that you consider replicating your primary Microsoft Dynamics AX database and configure Reporting Services to use the replicated database for ad-hoc reports. For more information on supported SQL Server configurations, see SQL Server topology.

• Will you need to deploy Analysis Services on a dedicated server?

  We recommend that you consider deploying Analysis Services on a dedicated server for environments with high requirements for business analytics.

• Will you require additional AOS servers to support production reports?

Sample deployment scenarios range from a single-server deployment to a large-scale distributed deployment. The scenarios are provided to assist you in planning your infrastructure and server requirements. These scenarios do not provide any infrastructure sizing guidelines. For more information, see Sample deployment scenarios.