Limitations¶

BCDock runs real Business Central containers - the same images Microsoft publishes - but there are important restrictions you should understand before using the platform.

The buyer-facing summary lives at bcdock.io/docs/limitations. This page is the engineering-detail version: the actual constraints, what they mean in practice, and what's coming.

Sandbox and testing use only¶

BCDock environments use Microsoft's developer/sandbox licences. These are legally restricted to non-production purposes. You must not use BCDock for live business operations, financial transactions, or any workload that requires a production Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central licence.

See: Microsoft Business Central Container EULA.

✓ Allowed	✗ Not allowed
AL extension development & testing	Production workloads or live operations
Staff training and onboarding	Processing live customer or financial data
Demos and proof-of-concept evaluations	Replacing a Microsoft BC SaaS subscription
Integration and regression testing	Revenue-generating business operations
Migration testing before production cutover
Version compatibility checks

If your use case isn't on the allowed list, talk to us first - there are edge cases we're happy to discuss (internal-only training, public-facing demos with synthetic data, etc.) but they need explicit confirmation.

Provisioning time¶

Environments are not instant. Time depends on whether pre-built resources already exist for your chosen BC version × country combination.

Scenario	Typical time
⚡ Pre-built resources available (warm pool, cached image)	under 2 minutes
⚡ Pre-built image, cold pool	under 15 minutes
⏳ No pre-built resources - first time for this version × country combo	~78 minutes (one-time)

The longer wait only happens once per version × country combination. All subsequent environments on that combo provision in under 15 minutes (or under 2 minutes once a pool is warm).

Free trial caps¶

Free trial accounts have two independent caps:

Cap	Limit	What happens at the cap
Active runtime	7 hours total across all environments	Running envs auto-suspend; resume requires a paid plan
Stored time	100 hours (~4.2 days) total across all environments	Per-env auto-suspend after grace period
Wall-clock expiry	14 days from signup	Trial ends, all envs suspend; upgrade to keep them

Trial counters live on the company, not the user. Trial is one per human - if you delete your account and re-sign up with the same email, you don't get a fresh trial (the trial-history flag set at anonymisation time blocks both buckets).

Active runtime is metered per-second across all environments simultaneously. Stored time is metered per-environment-day. Hibernating cuts active billing instantly; the env continues to consume the stored bucket until you delete it.

Differences from Microsoft BC SaaS¶

BCDock is a developer tool, not a SaaS ERP. Feature-by-feature:

Feature	BCDock	BC SaaS
Production licence	✗ Sandbox only	✓ Full commercial
AL extension dev	✓ Full support	✓ Full support
Web services / OData	✓ Full support	✓ Full support
Multi-company	✓ Full support	✓ Full support
Power Platform	✗ Not available	✓ Native integration
Azure AD SSO	⚠ Manual configuration	✓ Built-in
AppSource extensions	⚠ Manual install	✓ One-click
Automatic BC updates	✗ User-managed	✓ Microsoft-managed
Uptime SLA	⚠ Best effort	✓ 99.9% guaranteed
Compliance certs	⚠ Azure-level only	✓ SOC 2, ISO 27001
Microsoft support	✗ BCDock support only	✓ Included

Hibernation and resume¶

Operation	Typical time	Notes
Hibernate	~1-3 minutes	Container gzipped to blob storage; pool slot freed
Resume (same BC major version)	~1-2 minutes	Container restored on any compatible pool
Resume across major BC versions	~5-15 minutes	Cross-version upgrade required; CLI/portal will prompt for confirmation

Cross-major-version backwards resume is not supported (e.g. you can't take a v28-hibernated env and resume it onto a v27 pool). Forwards is the documented escape hatch.

Regional availability¶

Currently provisioning in:

australiaeast / australiasoutheast
westus2
westeurope (limited; check with us before relying on it)

Each region has its own pool family, image cache, and Key Vault. Cross-region env moves are staff-driven today (not user-initiated yet); reach out via support@bcdock.io if you need an environment moved between regions.

Pools host 2-9 environments each. Environments on the same pool share:

The pool VM's compute (CPU, memory) - sized so that typical concurrent usage doesn't contend
Traefik (the pool's reverse proxy)
The pool's network egress

They do not share:

BC databases (each env has its own)
File system (each env is a separate Docker container)
Credentials (each env has unique admin password)

A pool can host environments belonging to different companies. Tenant isolation is enforced at the API layer (every query carries a company-scoped filter) and inside the BC containers themselves - cross-environment access from a customer's container is not possible. Full posture detail in security/posture.

Compliance scope¶

Azure-level compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001) inherits from Azure. We run on Azure.
BCDock-level compliance is currently best-effort. We don't claim SOC 2 or ISO 27001 for the BCDock platform itself - that's a Phase D milestone that needs ≥1 paying enterprise to justify the audit cost.
Data residency: pick a region; your data stays in that region's pool, blob storage, and Key Vault. We don't replicate cross-region without explicit configuration.
Sandbox containers are not in scope for HIPAA, PCI, or similar regulated-data regimes. Use synthetic or anonymised data.

Detailed posture: security/posture.

What's not on the roadmap¶

Power Platform integration - would require BC SaaS, not sandbox containers. Not happening.
Production hosting - explicitly licence-prohibited. Not happening.
Automatic BC version updates inside an environment - design choice. Each env is pinned to its BC version; resume across versions is the upgrade path. This keeps the version lifecycle predictable for testing.
AppSource auto-install - Microsoft's marketplace doesn't expose programmatic install for sandbox containers. Manual install via bcdock env publish is the path.

Questions¶

Anything unclear, or a use case you're not sure fits? Email hello@bcdock.io.