If you have Microsoft Dynamics GP formerly known as Great Plains Dynamics implemented in your organization and you are experiencing performance issues, we would like to present you this small publication, written in the form of FAQ and highlights.
Dynamics GP is module based application and it is hosted in Microsoft SQL Server 2005, 2008 or even 2000 on Microsoft Windows 2003 or 2008 Server Operating System – obviously performance tuning should be analyzed at Windows and SQL Server sides first:
1. Microsoft SQL Server. Here you should try to reduce number of protocols installed, ideally having TCP/IP only – if you do not have legacy Operating System and Networking parts, such as Novell – you should be OK to have TCP/IP as the only protocol. Normally you should allow SQL Server to control operating system RAM, however in the cases when you have other application potentially competing for the Server memory, try to reduce maximum SQL Server memory to 5-15% of total RAM. With older versions of Great Plains, we saw the issues with TCP address resolution by server name. So, please, check the resolution and potentially add IP address resolution locally in the hosts file, or even try to specify IP address directly in ODBC System DSN, usually named Dynamics GP
2. Windows Server side tuning. Control Panel System Properties, click Advanced tab and then Settings in the Performance section – be sure to switch Background Services in Adjust for the best performance. In the Virtual Memory section consider to place Pagefile.sys to the hard drive, different from the one, where SQL databases are hosted and size it at minimum being 1.5 of the system RAM. And the third hint – in File and Printer Sharing form Microsoft Networks Properties switch to Maximize data throughput for network applications
3. Hardware RAID consideration. In this paper we assume that you are mid-size or small organization, if you have over 75 Dynamics GP concurrent users, please give us a call for further directions. Consider SCSI RAID 0 for Log Files and Operating System, RAD 5 or RAID 10 for Database files. If you have some luxury hardware budget, consider placing SQL backup files to RAID 1 (stripping hard disks, having maximum writing performance). If possible, place page file to separate RAID 0 as well
4. Other hardware tips. Be sure that you have minimal number of switch-like connections to reach the server from your Dynamics GP workstation (versus cascade of passive hubs, obviously eliminate all 10BaseT nodes)
5. If all the above advises do not help you, then you should prepare to SQL Profiler tracing, logging Dex ODBC and SQL statements and other tools, typically recommended for Microsoft Dynamics GP technical consultant
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