Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server is a .NET-based Windows Service application that manages communications between Microsoft Dynamics NAV clients and Microsoft Dynamics NAV databases in SQL Server. It uses the Windows Communication Framework (WCF) as its communication protocol.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server uses an ADO.NET interface, which is a managed data access layer that supports SQL Server connection pooling. This simplifies deployment of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV three-tier architecture for deployments where the three tiers are installed on separate computers. Specifically, administrators are not required to manually create service principal names (SPNs) or to set up delegation when the client, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server, and SQL Server are on separate computers. For more details, see Data Access.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server supports a range of different client types. This includes the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows client and the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client and two types of web services. For more information, see Client Types. You administer Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server using either Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server Administration tool or Windows PowerShell cmdlets. For more information, see Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server Administration Tool or Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows PowerShell Cmdlets.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server is installed when you select either the Server Option or the Developer Option in Microsoft Dynamics NAV Setup.

Note
Installing Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server on encrypted drives is not supported. You may experience issues if the server runs as a user that does not have access rights to the encrypted files.

Note
You can install Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server only on 64-bit operating systems.

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