I don't like maintenance tasks. I don't like having to remember to do something on a regular basis. I don't like having to do low value tasks constantly.
While it has been valuable for me to manually run NavContainerHelper the last several months, I think I am finally at a point where I sufficiently understand how it works and what it does. I'm now ready to automate my Business Central Container build process so that I don't have to do it manually.
Just tell me how it went...
This isn't anything new--I'm just finally getting around to doing it for me with the features that I want. If there are other ways or better ways to do this, let me know.
I share the background, my thinking, and my journey creating the script in this video.
In short, I've just wrapped the call to New-BcContainer in some additional PowerShell script to enable full logging, some basic error handling, and email notification.
As I've been using NavContainerHelper, it's become clear that there can be a lot of waiting as it downloads gigabytes of data for the images and hundreds of megabytes for the artifacts. It then has to mash all of that together to build a Business Central Container. It can take a while.
Sometimes it seems the process is pretty quick. But sometimes the process seems to take forever. When it's in the middle of doing its thing, I can't tell whether it's taking longer than normal, or if it just feels like it's taking a long time.
So I'm now measuring how long it takes for NavContainerHelper to create containers.
Ya gotta measure things
If the container setup process takes longer than normal, I'll want to know why. Was it a performance issue downloading images or artifacts? Or is there a performance issue with the VM? Or did some error cause the script to fail prematurely?
Here's the PowerShell script I've setup to record the start time, end time, and elapsed time of the New-BcContainer process. This is a sample that uses the values for building a BC container in my environment--you'll want to adjust the New-BcContainer parameter values to your preferred values.
At the top of the script, I record the start time, then output that time in the log so that I can see when the script started.
I added a try/catch block so that even if the script fails, my script outputs the end time and elapsed time.
In the finally block, I record the time again, then calculate elapsed time. The elapsed time is then output to the log.
Building a new named image vs. using an existing named image
In this example, I see that when the script had to build a new named image, it took 13 minutes to create the named image and then create the container. But when it was able to use an existing named image, it only took 1 minute.
Good to know!
Now I can use this script to see how my dedicated physical server compares to my VMs. I assume that the VMs will be slower, but I'm curious to see how much slower.
Steve Endow is a Microsoft MVP in Los Angeles. He works with Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft Power Automate, Power Apps, Azure, .NET, Dynamics GP, and SQL Server. You can also find him on Twitter and YouTube http://www.precipioservices.com
One of the challenges I've had using the Business Central NavContainerHelper module has been managing the versions and updates. Freddy Kristiansen is constantly updating NavContainerHelper to add features or fix issues, so a new version might be released within 24 hours of the prior release.
It seems like there is at least one update per week. As a result, I always forget to update NavContainerHelper and often end up using an older version, which can sometimes result in errors.
I wanted to automate the update process so that I always know that I have the latest version of NavContainerHelper installed. And ONLY the latest version--making sure that I don't have any older versions installed side-by-side.
I don't know if this is the best method, but I think it should work. If you know of a better way, let me know!
Here's the script I'd like to run automatically every day:
I want to install the latest version, but I want to make sure that I don't have an older version still installed. There are a few ways to do this, but I figure with this script, it removes all existing versions, and then installs the latest version.
I normally don't recommend Install-Module -Force if you are running the script manually, but in this case, I believe I need -Force in order to bypass the verification dialog that appears during installation. Also, since I know that I've just uninstalled all versions before installing the latest version, I think using -Force should be okay in this particular case.
I saved the above 3 line script to a .ps1 file.
I then opened Windows Task Scheduler using Run As Administrator.
Windows Task Scheduler
I created a new folder called Steve to make it easier to find my tasks.
I then created a new task (not a Basic task).
Task - General Info
I gave the task a name. Then I set the task to use the Local Administrator user. This is on one of my dev VMs, and I know the PowerShell script will need Admin rights, so I chose Administrator just to avoid any hassles. If you are on a company network / domain, you'll need to figure out which domain user / rights you need to allow the script to run as a task.
Nightly update
On the Triggers tab, I setup a schedule to run Daily at 8pm.
On the Actions tab, I created an action to call powershell with the -File argument, based on this blog post.
It seems to work, so I'll keep an eye on it for a week or so to verify that NavContainerHelper is always on the latest version and that I don't have any old versions installed side-by-side.
Steve Endow is a Microsoft MVP in Los Angeles. He works with Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft Power Automate, Power Apps, Azure, .NET, Dynamics GP, and SQL Server. You can also find him on Twitter and YouTube http://www.precipioservices.com
Here is a complete list of the commands that I've collected to manage Business Central Containers, as of July 2020. If you have any others that you recommend, please comment below and let me know!
Thanks to Daniel and Tanya and Džoka for some additions!
Open Powershell / Powershell ISE on HOST machine using Run As Administrator
NOTE: When referring to a Container ID or Image ID, you can use the first
few characters of the ID if they are unique--you do not have to always
use the full ID.
Check NavContainerHelper Version
Get-InstalledModule NavContainerHelper
Fresh Install of NavContainerHelper
Install-module navcontainerhelper
Import-Module navcontainerhelper
Install Latest NavContainerHelper
If you KNOW you don't have multiple versions installed:
Update-Module NavContainerHelper -Force
If you MIGHT have multiple versions installed:
$MyModuleName = <modulename>
Uninstall-Module $MyModuleName -allversions
Install-Module $MyModuleName
NOTE: I do not recommend using the -Force option with Install-Module.
It can bypass valuable warnings that you want to know about.
Alternate method to Remove Old Versions of NavContainerHelper
$ModuleName = 'navcontainerhelper';
$Latest = Get-InstalledModule $ModuleName;
Get-InstalledModule $ModuleName -AllVersions | ? {$_.Version -ne $Latest.Version} | Uninstall-Module -WhatIf
Container Management Commands
Compact Container listing:
docker ps --format "table {{.Names}}\t{{.ID}}\t{{.CreatedAt}}\t{{.Status}}"
Full listing:
docker ps
docker ps -a
docker start <id>
docker stop <id>
docker container inspect
Remove Container
Recommended method:
Remove-BCContainer <containername>
Manual Docker method:
docker stop <id>
docker rm <id>
Manually clean up hosts file
Manually remove desktop icons
Manually remove extensions from C:\ProgramData\NavContainerHelper\Extensions\
Stop all running containers:
docker stop $(docker ps -aq)
Images
docker images
docker images -a
Remove Image
docker rmi <id>
docker rmi <repository>:<tag>
Remove all images:
docker rmi $(docker images -aq)
Clean up old images
Remove orphaned images with "< none >" identifiers:
docker images -q -f dangling=true | % { docker rmi $_ }
Remove orphaned images:
docker image prune -f
Remove orphaned AND UNUSED images:
WARNING: Be careful with this: It will remove generic OS images used by NavContainerHelper!
docker image prune -a -f
Get Artifact Info for an existing BC Container:
Get-BcContainerArtifactUrl containername
Get-NavContainerArtifactUrl containername
Diagnostics
Get-BcContainerEventLog
Create New BC Container
New-BcContainerWizard
https://blog.baudson.de/blog/stop-and-remove-all-docker-containers-and-images
Steve Endow is a Microsoft MVP in Los Angeles. He works with Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft Power Automate, Power Apps, Azure, .NET, Dynamics GP, and SQL Server. You can also find him on Twitter and YouTube http://www.precipioservices.com
UPDATE: If you're interested in a convenient way to run the BcContainerHelper PowerShell commands, check out Krzysztof's Azure Data Studio Notebook with sample BcContainerHelper commands. Jupyter Notebooks are a great way to include documentation and commands in a single convenient format.
Have you used the new New-BcContainerWizard tool? If not, settle in! And I'll throw in a story about a puzzling Docker error and how Freddy helped me work through it.
Here's a video where I walk through my recent Docker learning:
Yesterday I planned on working through Erik Hougaard's video about calling an
external web API from AL and processing the JSON response.
Since I needed a new BC Docker Container to work on the demo code, I thought
it would be a good opportunity to test Freddy's new BC Container Wizard
tool. So I made sure I had the latest version of NAV Container Helper,
and typed New-BcContainerWizard.
The wizard is a really nifty PowerShell utility that asks you a series of
questions that walk you through the different options available when using the
NewBcContainer command. After I completed the questions, it provided me
with this script.
This is a really great tool. When I first started using NavContainerHelper, it seemed very confusing and I had no idea which options to include and which values made sense for my needs. This wizard resolves that and will be a great resource for people who are new to Docker.
Now that I had my nifty PowerShell script, I ran it.
Sad Trombone
"This request is not supported"
Um. What?
After a bit of googling, I eventually made my way to the NavContainerHelper GitHub repository to see if I could learn anything from the Issues list. I saw another issue that also had "CreateComputeSystem", but the specific error was different.
So I submitted a separate issue on GitHub. This was the first GitHub issue I've ever submitted, so I didn't know how or what to include. I used another issue as an example, and I stumbled through the process, including what I was trying to do, a copy of my New-BcContainer script, and as much information about the error that I had available.
Freddy responded within a few hours asking for the full build log from a successful container build (excluding the imageName parameter). I was able to attach that full build log as a text file.
Within a few minutes, he replied, explaining that the log showed I was using a very old version of windows.
The last few digits are the important ones
Sure enough, Windows Update had a few failed updates. Those failed updates had prevented ANY updates from being applied to my server. Once I cleared those errors and updated my server to the latest windows build, the New-BcContainer script worked successfully with the imageName parameter.
I then looked through the full container build log that I had submitted to the issue, and sure enough, there it was.
I'm talkin' to you!
Among the hundreds of lines that scrolled by during the build process, the warning was right there, showing that I had a very old Windows build and that the generic image didn't match.
While this did delay me by over a day in my AL learning process, this side adventure was very valuable, as it helped me understand a little bit more about Docker and the NavContainerHelper build process.
I wrote a post in April, "Make sure to update NavContainerHelper", in which I described some issues I had that were caused by having several old versions of the NavContainerHelper module installed.
Today, while updating the NavContainerHelper module on my Docker VM, I learned a few things, and I think I finally have a basic understanding of the PowerShell Module install and update process.
If you're a PowerShell pro or a NavContainerHelper pro, this will probably seem obvious, but as a newbie with both tools, it was a "learning moment" for me that explained the issues I had previously with multiple NavContainerHelper versions.
