Introduction

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software product from Microsoft. It automates and streamlines business processes for small and mid-sized organizations and local subsidiaries of large international Groups. The product is part of the Microsoft Dynamics family, and is intended to assist with finance, manufacturing, customer relationship management, supply chains, analytics and electronic commerce.  

The Microsoft Dynamics NAV software is composed of three major components (three-tier architecture):

• Data Tier: The Database Server, a database that stores the Microsoft Dynamics NAV data
• Middle or Server Tier: The Application Server, which is a service that manages all business logic and communication of Microsoft Dynamics NAV's operation

• Client Tier: The Client(s) is the actual user interface into Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Through the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Portal Framework, NAV 2013 supports the following clients:

  • The Windows Client
  • The Web Client
  • The Web Service Client
  • The SharePoint client

It additionally supports a NAS services client for programmatic access.

Figure 1 : Architecture of Microsoft Dynamics NAV

From Figure 1, it is evident that the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server is critical to the uninterrupted operations of the NAV solution. If this component slows down or is unreachable, then clients will not be able to access critical business data stored in the NAV database whenever they need it! This in turn may cause crucial business processes to stall, resulting in significant loss of revenues and opportunities! If this is to be avoided, administrators must make sure that the Microsoft Dynamics NAV server is always available, is sized right, and is able to service the requests it receives promptly. For this, administrators must continuously monitor the availability and operations of the NAV server, quickly detect bottlenecks, accurately isolate their source, and rapidly resolve them. This is where eG Enterprise helps administrators.