Great Plains server recommendations

[disintegration]

Hi, we're transitioning to Great Plains from Quickbooks and I'm curious about setting up a separate development server and production server to test updates.

I've heard about this "virtual server" software, would that be applicable in this sort of situation? I guess I'm just curious how people handle this efficiently. Maybe the development server could be sort of a lesser machine?

Thank you.

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Space travel's in my blood.

 

[VictoriaYudin]

We are a GP partner and have a bunch of Virtual Server images set up with various versions of GP for support and testing purposes. Works great, I would highly recommend it. Takes a little bit more time to install and runs a little slower than installing directly on a machine, but not much, especially if you use Virtual Server 2005 (as opposed to Virtual PC). One really great thing about this for support and testing is that you can easily revert back to the state before you made any changes.

This is not officially supported by Microsoft for a GP production environment, but I think for the development side you should be fine with it.

Hope that helps.

 

[disintegration]

It does, thank you.

We have a SBS 2003 standard server, running Exchange primarily. I'm thinking we should upgrade to premium to get the SQL Server... get a strong production server for Great Plains... and a not-as-strong development server with Virtual Server 2005 to test the updates. Would that work well?



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Space travel's in my blood.

 

[VictoriaYudin]

A lot of people aren't crazy about having SQL and Exchange on one box. I think it should be fine if you do it right and don't have too many people using either. Certainly a lot of bang for your buck. You want to make sure you're not using ISA on it and use a hardware firewall instead. And throw in enough RAM to make both SQL and Exchange happy. (For example, for 10 users I would probably put 3GB of RAM in there.)

 

[Dukester0122]

Just be careful giving advises with RAM because Great Plains comes with SQL Server 2000 Standard not Enterprise. You have to upgrade to SQL Enterprise AND modify the server boot configuration files with the 3GB parameter to be able to use more than 2GB.

 

[VictoriaYudin]

Actually Great Plains doesn't come with SQL at all, it has to be purchased separately now. SBS comes with SQL Standard and, as you mention, there are ways to make it use more than 2GB of RAM, however, that is not what I am recommending. I am recommending a total of 3GB of RAM or more in the server, so that if you limit SQL to 1 or 1.5GB, the system and Exchange still have enough RAM to not impact performance.

If someone needs SQL Enterprise with Great Plains, they should NOT be running Great Plains and Exchange on SBS. At that level you should have a dedicated GP server.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Dukester0122]

I didn't know SQL have to be purchased separately. Over the years it came with GP but since its now own by Microsoft, they find the most logical way to get more money out of you.

You're right, SBS isn't recommended for this situation because its a very low end server. Just remember when you want more than 2GB of RAM, the only option right now is to go to SQL Enterprise and that could cost you about $18,000 more than Standard.

 

[disintegration]

Thanks for the advice, guys. Even with the cost savings, it seems like putting SQL and Exchange on the same box just invites trouble and could potentially be outgrown quickly.

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Space travel's in my blood.

 

[VictoriaYudin]

Yes, when it was Great Plains, they sold SQL server with Great Plains software. Now that it's Microsoft, you have to buy it separately. It's a crazy crazy world.

If I had to guess a reason it would be support. Since SQL is under Software Assurance and GP is under one of three different maintenance plans, they probably thought it would be better to separate the two rather than try to co-mingle the SA and maintenance.

 

[VictoriaYudin]

Yes, if you are planning on growing, you might want to invest now in a separate server for GP. Easier and cheaper as far as work involved to install that way now that to have to move it later. One other good thing about a dedicated GP server is that if you need to bring it down for whatever reason, you don't have to worry about bringing down your domain server and Exchange - not that you should have to bring it down often, but it does happen once in a while.

 

[donwenn]

In establishing a hosted environment where the GP server is essentially remote,15 uesers, many report run daily.

Please describe the server construct E.G.; applications server - processor, ram, I/O, separate SQL server - same information, temp file locations, client settings, and optimized server / DB tuning.

thanks

 

[disintegration]

Guys, how about GP and SQL Server being on the same box?

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Space travel's in my blood.