MS 'Requirements' vs 'Recommendations' for GP 10

[bubarooni1]

Hi All,

I'm in the process of upgrading GP 8 to GP 10. I've upgraded the MSDE instance to SQL Server '05 Express. The db is housed on a WinXP PRO SP2 box with a nice dual core processor and 4 Gb's of memory. It handles the db (and two other sql server instances) without breaking a sweat.

The MS doc on upgrading to GP 10 speaks of 'Client Requirements' and 'Server Recommendations'. My 'server' meets those recommendations except for the OS. MS 'recommends' a true server operating system however it also says 'MSDE 2000 and SQL 2005 Express can be installed on a non-server operating system, however it is recommended to install on a server operating system.'

My GP Vendor is saying I really should look long and hard at replacing the box with a new server and at least Windows 2003 SBS. They are saying that WinXP Pro is 'unsupported' by MS in this role as opposed to not being 'recommended' AND that we might run into problems with 'with speed, data corruption, functionality, etc.'

It just so happens they are willing to sell me both.

Has anyone here ran into any issues with GP 10 running on WinXP Pro?

Thanks In Advance

 

[VictoriaYudin]

One thing I always say about the MS published 'system requirements' - they are typically the minimums that will let something work. They're not talking about performance or best practices here.

In reality, there is no single system recommendation that will work for everyone, nor is there one answer to your question. Here is what would help answer it better:

- How many users are concurrently using GP?
- Any idea of average transactions per day/month?
- Do you have any imports?
- Any reporting outside of GP?
- Anything else running on this machine?

If you only have a few users and not doing anything else on the machine, I don't see any reason why you can't run SQL on Windows XP. Unless there were networking issues, I would not expect to see data corruption or loss of functionality. And networking issues could exist if you were running SQL on a server OS just as easily.

One other thing to take into consideration - new GP versions will require more, not less. Of just about everything. Is the GP installation now just ok performance-wise or would you call it fast? Because if it's just ok with GP 8.0, I would expect GP 10 to be significantly slower given the same infrastructure. This will be case more with the client application though, probably not so much with the SQL server, so you might want to take a look at the clients - I would not recommend anything less than 1GB of RAM for GP 10 clients.

Finally, you can always go to GP 10 and see how it goes. If you find that performance is not adequate, then you can consider going to a server OS. Just remember, a box that can run XP well may not be enough for SBS given all the other things it will be running automatically. Again, this greatly depends on a lot of other factors and there is no global answer that will fit everyone.


Victoria Yudin
Dynamics GP MVP 2005 - 2008
Flexible Solutions - home of GP Reports

http://www.flex-solutions.com/gpreports.html

 

[bubarooni1]

the current xp pro box hosts 3 sql server instances and does so without a problem.

my problem here is 'unsupported' vs 'recommended'. i think it is supported, just not 'recommended' by MS.

'MSDE 2000 and SQL 2005 Express can be installed on a non-server operating system, however it is recommended to install on a server operating system.'

if microsoft says it's unsupported i might be a tad leary of it, but that's not what they are saying. they say you can do it, but they don't recommend it.

- How many users are concurrently using GP?
(7 total users, normally about 3 or 4 concurrent)
- Any idea of average transactions per day/month?
(300 a workday would be a pretty good average)
- Do you have any imports?
(1, custom written payroll hours import from another app)
- Any reporting outside of GP?
(FRx - 1 user)
- Anything else running on this machine?
(2 sql instances for other apps)

 

[VictoriaYudin]

I agree, I would consider this "supported but not recommended".

For 3 or 4 concurrent users with a fairly light load (~300 transactions) you're probably fine. I imagine the payroll integration is just a once per payroll thing, as opposed to a constant import, so that shouldn't add too much to the load. And 1 FRx user is not a big deal, I would expect that are running reports once in a while, not constantly, all day long. Of course the other 2 SQL instances could start hogging resources, but it doesn't sound like that's the case.

While I would expect GP 10 to be slower than GP 8.0, all other things being equal, I think your ultimate test will be your users letting you know how the performance is.



Victoria Yudin
Dynamics GP MVP 2005 - 2008
Flexible Solutions - home of GP Reports

http://www.flex-solutions.com/gpreports.html