New Computer Build

I had a look at the network usage on the card installed in the server computer. It's a Gigabit Card connected to the Gigabit port on the switch, but the router is only 10/100 as are the rest of the computers.

Anyway, I ran some tests which included a single customer statement which shows smaller spikes and then a full customer list statement where you can see it shot up. So what analysis would you make from this?

Network1.jpg
 
Ok, so if it's not the network and it's not the hard drive, what is it that's causing the problem? What can be done to increase the performance of the I/O requests that doesn't involve Terminal Server etc?
 
Hi Guys,

we use sage L50 at our place, set up in the typical client server model as discussed earlier in the thread. Based on my own experience I can add the following to the conversation.

1: Our client machines are running xp pro and we stopped upgrading L50 in 2008 (I think) as year on year the upgrades were making the system slower and more unstable.

2: The latest version on a reasonably well specced win7 box appears to run ok (albeit not over the network at the moment).

3: L50 has a transaction limit (100,000 I think) and the closer you get to this number then the slower it will become. If you have a lot of historic transactions then try archiving some of the data, the performance boost will probably surprise you.
 
gman said:
I had a look at the network usage on the card installed in the server computer. It's a Gigabit Card connected to the Gigabit port on the switch, but the router is only 10/100 as are the rest of the computers.

Anyway, I ran some tests which included a single customer statement which shows smaller spikes and then a full customer list statement where you can see it shot up. So what analysis would you make from this?
Click to expand...
It looks like there are periods where the network is maxed out at 100Mbit (the smaller plateau bits to the left of the picture).

I would suspect you would get a lot better usability if everything were gigabit. Are the PCs really that old that they are only 10/100?
 
arad85 said:
It looks like there are periods where the network is maxed out at 100Mbit (the smaller plateau bits to the left of the picture).

I would suspect you would get a lot better usability if everything were gigabit. Are the PCs really that old that they are only 10/100?
Click to expand...

Assuming that only 1 client was doing access at that point :)

What do the clients look like?
 
Ah of course, 10% of a gigabit card is 100Mbit and as it was only one workstation runing the tests I guess they are maxing out their connections? Interestingly, the final spike was when I ran a test from a workstation connected through the second gigabit port on the switch and has a gigabit network card.

Paul, the audit trail has been chopped massively before so there's only about 20K transactions. I've heard something about products constantly growing which can slow things down also, I may look into this.

I haven't checked the other workstations to see what cards are in them but if it's a 100Mbit switch then would it matter? I'm guessing I need to use a gigabit router which is going to be a pain because of some of the settings.
 
How many clients are you talking here and are there any reasons for using Sage 50 over other solutions? I would seriously look at other solutions. I would take a hard look at Xero which is new to the UK but picking up momentum. SAGE Is just going to get slower without serious cash input. Xero is a monthly cost of only £19 with unlimited users. We have migrated from TAS to Xero and luckily for us our accountant was taking on Xero at the same time so we have moved together.

There are also utilities to migrate from L50 to Xero....

http://blog.xero.com/2012/07/movemybooks-converts-sage-to-xero/

It comes down to how complicated you want your accounts to be, for us the ability
to access our accounts anywhere with an iPad app, iphone app, android app, web access, the ability to link with other software products and the ability for my accountant to sign in from their office without making a visit or needing to take a backup.

As I said SAGE is going to get slower and there will be no solution to the poor performance without spending lots of money.

However....you can just switch the 10/100 switch out for a gigabit switch and have all the computers on the switch and plug this into the 10/100 router. Everything on the gigabit switch will run at gigabit speeds.
 
Basically........ The connections between each point will only run as fast as the slowest bit of kit in the line.

If you have a gigabit router, then plug in a 100mbit switch, and plug in pc 1 and pc 2 into the switch then the connection will only run at 100mbit (providing they have a 100mbit card in each pc), but if you plug them into the gigabit router - and the pc's have gigabit cards - and the cables are capable of gigabit - then the network should run UPTO gigabit speed.

Ste
 
I'd still want to look at the network usage on a client before arriving at a bandwidth issue. Just to be 100%.

Just because the server was using 10% doesn't mean it was all caused by the client.
 
Last edited:
I've been considering moving them onto another finance system for quite some time now, obviously the first one to look at was SAGE 200 but we are talking a starting point of £15K. SAGE have been talking abou changing Line50 from a file sharing system to an SQL type system for quite some time but I don't think it will ever happen as it could hurt SAGE 200 sales obviously.

They are also about to get a new system to manage operations on the site which links into SAGE, so whatever program was changed to would have to be compatible and also able to import all the data from SAGE.

I'd rather spend a few hundred on hardware first to be honest. I'll check the client workstations when I get a chance. If it's not the network though then what else could I be checking for? It has to be something to do with external requests to the server because as said, performance locally is rapid.
 
Dale_d3100 said:
would take a hard look at Xero which is new to the UK but picking up momentum.
Click to expand...

I'm afraid it can only be a locally controlled and stored system, nice it has the migration tool though just a shame it's an online service.
 
Last edited:
I've just been reading through and am I correct in thinking this is for 8 users?

A 16/24 port smart gigabit switch, a managed switch for 8 users is overkill.
An i5, 8Gb of RAM and a good hard disk would improve performance.

RAID is an interesting beast and not all RAID is equal. A cheap RAID card setup in RAID 1 will give you redundancy, but may not have enough throughput to give you a performance increase.

What is the system they are bringing in to work with Sage?

EDIT:- Why does it have to be local?
 
What settings are on the switch? I use a smart switch here mainly so I can port replicate to figure out what is going on sometimes. Do you need a smart switch? Even if you do, they are only around £120 for a 16 port one. I'd start by getting everything gigabit to start with.
 
They have to take into account expansion so 16 users would be the min. to be honest, the system being brought in will be posting invoice data across to Sage which I'm sure is just a few basic columns of data - probably via csv but automated.

All data has to be stored locally, it's one of those 'don't ask' things if you know what mean.

I'm not sure about the switch settings, I can log in locally via ip address but there doesn't seem to be much you can check or change - usually just if ports are active etc. I can look more closely if I know what to look for?
 
Expansion is simply a matter of adding another switch. I have a TP-Link 16 port jetstream switch which does way more than I need it to do. It even has a couple of SFP slots should I want to link it to another switch by fibre! See: http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?categoryid=222&model=TL-SG3216
My guess is that it is not configured much at all so you could probably just replace it with something else directly. Log in and go through the setup screens and see if anything looks configured.
 
theres still quite a lot of unanswered questions here and a lot of assumption.

we havent gathered if the server is running at high CPU/memory usage. i dont think we've even had the full spec, beyond 3gb memory and 32bit XP.
we havent gathered if the clients are saturating their network connection for an extended period, if theyre not then switching to gigabit isnt going to do much.

id be wanting to be do a full load check on the server side by side with 1 client and see what the loads on resource and network do at the same times (remote desktop, vnc or teamviewer may help here).

one other thought, does the server have on access virus scanning switched on?
 
Last edited:
Antivirus has exclusions sets for all SAGE related stuff on the server and every workstation. I was thinking about turning Antivirus off on the server completely as all the workstations have Antivirus. I've heard this can help as even with the exclusions it can apparently still effect things.

Jetstream looks interesting :)

I'll come back with some screenshots soon, I'm seeing some warning messages coming up in the switch.


EDIT: Forgot to say, I can't see any specific setup with the switch and everything seems to be set to Auto mode.
 
Last edited:
Both running the same report, here's the 100Mbps workstation:

100Mbps_Workstation_Network.jpg


And here's the Gigabit workstation (mind it's still a 100Mbps router)

Gigabit_Workstation_Network.jpg


And here's the switch status - should I be worried?

Switch_Status_Screen.jpg

I have noticed the speed is improving a little bit more than yesterday and I'm wondering if it's the SSD? It's a SATA3 drive but using a SATA1 interface on the motherboard (old board). Perhaps full SATA3 would help?
 
Well, you're saturating the 100Mbps link for a while. Not sure how much time that is taking as there's no seconds mark along the graph, but I'm still of the opinion that the first thing to do is get everyone gigabit (assuming the NICs are gigabit and the cabling is cat 5e). You might want to look at the 24 port switch given that 10 ports are already used on that one.

If all your PCs are 10/100 and not gigabit, is there an option to put a decent PCI-e card in them?
 
The machines are a bit of a mix but I am definitely noticing that the machine with the Gigabit card on the gigabit port is far more responsive than the others, despite the 100Mbps router.

What's all those errors that the switch is showing?
 
From: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...d=4063679&prodTypeId=12883&objectID=c02597291

hp said:
Excessive broadcasts
Description: An excessively high rate of broadcast packets was received on the port. This degrades the performance of all devices connected to this switch.
Possible Causes: This is usually caused by a network topology loop, but can also be due to a malfunctioning device, NIC, NIC driver, or software application.
Actions:
1. Verify that there are no topology loops in your network.
2. Find and correct any malfunctioning devices or NICs on the segment.
3. Find and correct any malfunctioning applications on devices on the segment.
Click to expand...
 
arad85 said:
Well, you're saturating the 100Mbps link for a while. Not sure how much time that is taking as there's no seconds mark along the graph, but I'm still of the opinion that the first thing to do is get everyone gigabit (assuming the NICs are gigabit and the cabling is cat 5e). You might want to look at the 24 port switch given that 10 ports are already used on that one.

If all your PCs are 10/100 and not gigabit, is there an option to put a decent PCI-e card in them?
Click to expand...

id say its about 10-15 seconds roughly (providing the update speed has not been changed from normal). still not convinced gigabit is going to help significantly with speed in this instance.. but agree that its probably worth updating in the long run.

regarding the excessive broadcast messages, google is hinting at the loop detection giving off that message. presumably there are no loops in the network? that may even be the source of performance issues on the LAN.

edit - must refresh before posting..
 
Last edited:
It might also be worth checking the switch has the latest firmware on it too...
 
There is another router that is plugged into one of the wall connections which allows a computer in another part to be linked in. I could try disconnecting it.
 
Are there multiple routes in the system (i.e. is there more than one way of getting from one PC to another?).

I tend to test with the lowest common denominator (simplest system)....
 
Not that I can see, the other router is really just acting as an extension to a wall point - hmmm, they could reach each other through the 2nd router but also via the longer route of the main router.

That port 26 which is showing all the switch messages is the workstation that has the gigabit card in it. Port 25 is the main router. I've cleared stock trails and reduced the audit trail further and now the computer on the Gigabit connection is running pretty much as quick as the server. I think a network upgrade is probably sensible.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top