Setting up a Business Central Sandbox Container on Windows : Full Guide (Medium article)

albertassaad@hotmail.com
albertassaad@hotmail.com Member Posts: 16
in NAV Tips & Tricks

Hi everyone,

I wrote a step-by-step article on Medium covering the full setup of a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central sandbox container on Windows for local AL development. I kept running into the same setup steps every time I switched machines, so I put everything in one place.

The article covers:

  • Prerequisites (Windows edition, RAM, disk, PowerShell)
  • Installing Docker Desktop and switching to Windows containers
  • Enabling Hyper-V and the Containers Windows features
  • Installing BcContainerHelper
  • The full New-BcContainer command with every parameter explained
  • A workaround for slow/limited internet grabbing the W1 and platform artifact URLs from PowerShell, downloading them with a download manager, and placing them manually in C:\bcartifacts.cache\ so BcContainerHelper skips the download
  • Accessing BC in the browser and useful container management commands

Link to the article: https://medium.com/@albertassaad/setting-up-a-microsoft-dynamics-365-business-central-sandbox-container-on-windows-for-local-778b7319c3b6

The next article in the series will cover installing Visual Studio Code, configuring the AL Language extension, and publishing an extension to the bcserver container we built here.

Happy to hear feedback, corrections, or any tips you use in your own setup.

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