Great Plains periodically running slow 5

[allanp0220]

Hi,
Great Plains 5.5, 12 workstations running NT4, Windows 2000 server, 2.2G memory.

Periodically operators involved in invoicing particularly report that the system is running slow - and I've seen it, its really slow like one line of an invoice every 10 seconds.

Usually I stop and start SQL server agent and then reboot the server to clear out the server memory. At first we thought this cured it but it seems this is not always so. In fact the server can have 1.3G memory free and they can still report it running slow - other operators are aware of it but not affected to the same extent. Sometimes, just occasionally, they report that its running fine!

I should point out that our database is now reaching 8G. Does anyone think this is causing the problem, surely if this were the case then the server would be using its full memory before it slowed. Although we know it has to be reduced I don't want to call our consultants out at vast cost to reduce the data only to find we still have the problem.

I'm not really an IT Manager, just got dropped into the position but I know that your'e a really knowledgable lot can anyone point out some likely checks I can do to try and pinpoint the problem?
Many thanks
Allan

 

[allanp0220]

Thanks stef315,
Yes, I did backup and restore The World Online whilst everyone was working but this database is only 124Mb and since the server could fall over at any time its better if any other procedures are kept to out of work hours. As it is I have to do a re-index at least every two days otherwise the system becomes too slow for transferring orders to invoices.

Hopefully I'll be trying our small company on Wednesday night and if this is successful our big database on Thursday night........ after that I'm on holiday for a week so the system will have to fend for itself!
Regards
allan

 

[stef315]

Geez! you do have it bad. Must be a very large database! Are you do the Optimize Query option during the database maintenance plan?

Anyway, you timed it perfect...always good to get out of dodge after something like this! lol

Good luck!

 

[allanp0220]

Phew, almost got my fingers burnt!

Ihad made a small separate backup of one of our companies and intended to try to restore this to TWO as a test.

Everything went fine, there were two of us checking each action,until a Force Restore box popped up unexpectedly causing some confusion. I typed in the new path but then I suddenly decided that it was wrong and was destined to overwrite the database of one of our companies, and urgently pressed the CANCEL button.

From that moment it becomes a bit blurry.

My TWO company said that it had totally lost its data so there was no backup or restore available......... I tried to log into GP as SA and got an error message, I tried to log into another company and got the same error message and yet looking from another machine sa was logged into both companies but we couldn't log it out......... by now the panic was setting in!

Eventually I decided that if I could somehow restore TWO then this might release sa. Frantically looking for any options I discovered another restore button which allowed me to restore TWO from my original backup and at the same time this released sa. Panic over, but still a bit jittery especially since I committed the cardinal sin, the only backups were from the previous night! Lesson learnt.

In fact I think that if I had let it run it would have been fine but being less than 100percent confident decided to err on the side of caution by hitting the cancel button.

I think its given us a fright and we will probably leave it to the professionals.
Allan

 

[jazgeek]

in sql the "cancel" button means you're screwed.






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and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[technome]

After reading the above...

Have you run a sniifer on the network?
Has your wiring infrastructure been checked, one bad cable can creat nightmares. If you have managed switches, you could check the ports for execessive erors.

 

[technome]

A third party defrag program, such as Executive softwares Diskeeper wich does boot time defragmentation will speed up Dynamics if you can have your server offline for an hour once per month.

 

[dbigelow]

Allan,

If you are in charge of this you may wish to upgrade or suggest one to the owners - find out who in your area is a VAR for Great Plains and tell them your issues - I'm not a super expert but I think Microsoft has stopped supporting 5.5 and your database is getting fairly large -(i'm sure someone would want your business) - the microsoft website should list the local VAR's