R3 Upgrade - Testing the Infrastructure

So the project team tested the applications, we thought we were good...

Then the IT Operations team reminded us that we'll have all new servers which means that we need to test that too!  What does that mean?  I can't say that I can completely articulate that, but here's a start:

Upgrading to R3 allows us to upgrade the infrastructure which means upgraded SQL server, windows server, remote desktop services, upgraded management software and tools to support all of the above.

We use multiple RD (remote desktop) servers to access AX.  Installed onto these servers are the same things that would be installed on your local PC.  This include printer drivers, Microsoft Office, and if applicable Bartender.

We use multiple AOS servers to load balance user sessions of AX.  One AOS is dedicated to batch processing in the evening.  There are some application components that need to loaded onto each AOS.

By advice of our system administrator, there were some specific areas we should test given we will have new servers (this is written in non-technical speak):

1. Create, save, and view file attachments.  This is to test going to file shares to load a file to AX and then retrieving it.  AX defines where documents are stored in Organization administration> Setup> Document management> Document management parameters.
2. Exporting of reports and form grid contents to Excel.
3. Printer assignments.  We control this by group policies which is set up on the RD servers.
4. Creating and printing of documents - Besides standard SSRS reports, we use Bottomline Transform/Precision Forms.  This will test the connection to the Transform server and forms we have defined.
5. Access to pdfeditor.  We have defined some of our Transform documents to be editable using a pdfeditor.  The pdfeditor needs to be loaded on the RD servers.
6. Label printing.  We have label software connected to AX which in turn uses Bartender.  License keys had to be applied to both, and for Bartender we had to hardcode some information on each RD server due to crossing over subnets.
7. Importing data into AX.  This tests the setup of inbound port setups and then actually being able to load files from file shares.

The above tests need to occur on each RD and AOS server to insure any setups or configuration that is specific to each RD or AOS is accessed and testing.