Sage 100

Sage 100 ERP Standard v4.5.0.3 -- customer has just virtualized servers with VMWARE. Now the major symptom is some slowdown between clicking the Sage 100 ERP icon and the time when it starts. Typically there are no errors but it can take a minute between the click and when the screen appears. We are trying to narrow down what might be causing this. I naturally am suspicious of the ""usual suspects"" of Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware and anything scanning that files in the background. The IT department did tell me they are mirroring the SAN that they're using about every 3 minutes (yes, i suspect this as well) to an off-site data center. Other than the usual suspects that I've mentioned above - any opther ideas of the top of your head?

If they just imaged a physical server into the virtual environment, I would start looking back at IT to make sure their networking and storage is set up correctly and that the network is not congested. If they migrated MAS to a new virtual server, then you might need to look at the old Opportunistic Locking issue.

@WayneSchulz Here is a link to an older posting in the SAGE Community re: SAN devices. http://sagemas.lithium.com/t5/Technical-and-Installation/Application-Server-on-Virtual-Machine-and-Data-Locations-on/m-p/21428#M3274 I recently had a 4.40 client that was using a SAN device attached to a 2003 windows server to run SAGE 100 Standard. They were experiencing all kinds of slowness and even daily local and remote disconnects. They added a new Win 2008 R2 server, moved SAGE 100 Standard to the Win 2008 R2 server, and could not believe the improvement in reliability and speed. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the ideas. This is one of the classic situations where IT is pretty much ""off the rails"". As an example they suffered a near total data loss for MAS 90 when their systems crashed during a DISASTER RECOVERY MIGRATION.... It's a constant push and pull I've found with any company that has a multi-person IT department.

Anyone know if running Sage on a SAN is a supported configuration? I'm quite sure this is one I'll shortly be pulled into to prove or disprove Sage's guilt in the ongoing issue of delays on the network.

I just can't see how they would support or not support a SAN configuration. It all depends on the quality of the SAN. We have VMWare installs that have over 40 virtual servers spread across 2 redundant SANs and multiple physical ESXi hosts. This was the only confguration that we could get the IOPs that we needed to support the needs of those data centers. Again - applications are blind to the storage in the VMWare world. Again - I jsut don't see how Sage could have a supported configuration other than minimum IOPs. It has to be environmental to your install.

We run Sage 100 on pooled Equalogix SANs as well.

Any guesses as to why this user is running into sporadic slowdowns? Unfortunately I don't have any info on how the network is configured and have suggested the usual suspects that it's some type of anti-virus or malware scanner. They're also replicating the data something like every three minutes which to me sounds like it's probably their culprit. They claim to have exempted the Sage folders from scans but I have my doubts.

We've run MAS 90 directly on dumb consumer-level NAS boxes (works, but really not recommended) and we also have several clients running MAS virtualized in XenServer farms (with and without SANs), so I have to piggyback on what Gary and Scott have said, MAS runs fine on SANs.

You might start by looking at the event log of the VM.

I've got an IT team that's absolutely certain the problem is not with them. The same IT team that suffered a catastrophic loss of Sage data about two years ago.

I would have them try to break it down and prove it's MAS. Does the same slowdown appear when MAS is run directly on the server? If so, you've got a storage/virtual machine issue. If not, try from another virtualized server. If that still runs OK, then try from a non-virtualized device. Keep backing down the chain until the problem occurs. In my experience, if it's not the IOPS, it's the network bandwidth or routing.

If you can get to the server, I would run iPerf to test the bandwidth between the two devices. There's a basic tutorial here: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126474

Thanks - looks like they are going to put in a separate server ""because Sage is a flat file and runs slow"". I've found that it's impossible to argue in some cases such as this. Going down Tuesday to help move servers.

Why would you replicate the data every 3 minutes? With Sage's file locking and program based updating, will that even work with data replication?

LOL - They are probably used to SQL which is logged and requires much more horsepower than flat file which is not logged and has much better performance with writes. That is why the minimum requirements are higher for SQL. Offer up SQL to them. I think it is still considered a platform change - we need the tier. We have some experience with Veam for VMWare replication. If you hear that buzzword - we might be able to give you some insight.