The first step in running Dynamics 365 Business Central sandboxes is installing Docker. This is quite easy and documented at https://docs.docker.com/install/windows/docker-ee/. Once you have done that, it's time to run your first container. Microsoft has provided a very helpful PowerShell module called navcontainerhelper, which eases the process of creating containers. However, to give you some basic understanding of the underlying mechanisms and how Dynamics 365 Business Central images work, it makes sense to look at a couple of easy examples with just Docker.

The most basic way to run a Dynamics 365 Business Central sandbox is by using the following command:

docker run -e accept_eula=y mcr.microsoft.com/businesscentral/sandbox

This only works in what is called process isolation, which allows the container to use host resources such as memory as necessary. Depending on your configuration and whether you are running on an old version of Windows 10 or Docker, you may get an error stating that the container doesn't have enough memory. In that case, add -m 3G as a parameter, which will allow the container to reserve 3 GB of memory.

Note that this will, by default, pull the image based on Windows Server 2016. If you want to run the much smaller and therefore quicker image based on Windows Server 2019, you need to add what is called a tag; in this case, this will be ltsc2019. More details can be found in the Choosing the right image section:

docker run -e accept_eula=y mcr.microsoft.com/businesscentral/sandbox:ltsc2019

This instructs Docker to run a container using the specified image, that is, mcr.microsoft.com/businesscentral/sandbox. Running a container means that Docker checks whether that image has already been downloaded (pulled) and if not, it pulls it. If it is already available, or after Docker has downloaded the image for you, it creates a container for that image and starts it. You will see the output from the main process inside the console window where you ran that command.

With the -e parameter, you let Docker know that you want to set the accept_eula=y environment parameter inside the container, which means that you accept the End User License Agreement (EULA). This is necessary whenever you run a Dynamics 365 Business Central sandbox.

The following is the output of a docker run command where the image was not locally available:

docker run -e accept_eula=y -m 3G mcr.microsoft.com/businesscentral/sandbox

Unable to find image 'mcr.microsoft.com/businesscentral/sandbox:latest' locally

latest: Pulling from businesscentral/sandbox

3889bb8d808b: Already exists

…

6d7321cdab15: Already exists
5c2abed3c0c2: Already exists
0bc14e36adef: Pull complete
4fd56667f5dc: Pull complete
…
4dd9d6309b80: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:ca99037c70e1eedf21e8472a5d46efeb148dd46a7b16bdf2ddad864e2e4cb97c
Status: Downloaded newer image for mcr.microsoft.com/businesscentral/sandbox:latest
Initializing...
Starting Container
Hostname is 12cec5da3d89
PublicDnsName is 12cec5da3d89
Using NavUserPassword Authentication
Starting Local SQL Server
Starting Internet Information Server
Creating Self Signed Certificate
Self Signed Certificate Thumbprint 857B5A19C68D44BE3368CB96E2AFF6F540C0D957
Modifying Service Tier Config File with Instance Specific Settings
Starting Service Tier
Registering event sources
Creating DotNetCore Web Server Instance
Enabling Financials User Experience
Creating http download site
Setting SA Password and enabling SA
Creating admin as SQL User and add to sysadmin
Creating SUPER user
Container IP Address: 172.20.200.44
Container Hostname  : 12cec5da3d89
Container Dns Name  : 12cec5da3d89
Web Client          : https://12cec5da3d89/BC/
Admin Username      : admin
Admin Password      : Fuwu1800
Dev. Server         : https://12cec5da3d89
Dev. ServerInstance : BC
Files:
http://12cec5da3d89:8080/al-4.0.192371.vsix
http://12cec5da3d89:8080/certificate.cer
Initialization took 164 seconds
Ready for connections!