Database size in Navision/Upgrade

gunavs

Our company is planning to upgrade from our Navision 3.7 to Nav 2009. But we are extremely reluctant to go forward as our Navision is very slow (We have Navision 3.7 A with Sql server 2000) and have huge lock up issues. Our VAR told us that it might be due to our database size which is a little more than 200 GB with 100+users and our customizations and that if we upgrade to Sql server 2008 with Nav 2009 it would resolve our situation greatly. Any clients in the forum that have a huge database and a lot of users? Did you run into the speed and lock up issues too? Have you resolved it by upgrading? Is Navision designed to handle a huge databases? Are there any limitations if so?

Thank You

ara3n

on what kind of hardware are you running your server?

You will need to do some tuning after migrating to sql 2k8.

David_Singleton

gunavs wrote:

Our VAR told us that it might be due to our database size which is a little more than 200 GB with 100+users and our customizations and that if we upgrade to Sql server 2008 with Nav 2009 it would resolve our situation greatly.

Ask them how? Seriously did they just ay that so you will spend money on an upgrade, or have they actually done extensive testing with YOUR database in YOUR environment to prove this.

Of course it MIGHT make it faster, it also MIGHT make it slower. VSIFT is like that, it reduces the database size, and often locking reduces, but the some reports and processes may run slower, so the net effect could be slower.

If they are confident that it definitely will make your system faster, then have them put that in writing.

There is no way they should say that unless they have tested it. And it makes me really angry when companies make promises like this. I know a client that were on 3.70 and their VAR told them moving to 5.00sp1 would fix all their locking and speed problems. They moved to 5.00sp1 and the system was MUCH slower than 3.70. It was so bad that after a week, they threw out 5.00sp1 and went back to 3.70, and brought in a team of temps to re-enter a week of lost data to catch up again.

OK that's rare, and in this case was due to extremely poor customizations made by the partner, but when you say your system is heavily modified, be careful.

davmac1

You should determine why you have locking issues first.
Then these can be addressed either in your current system or an upgrade.
For example, if you have 100 users all trying to post sales orders at the same time, you will need a customization to address that.
Standard NAV2009 still locks the G/L Entry table when it posts accounting transactions, so it is important to find what is causing your bottlenecks and make sure they are addressed.

kriki

Just for curiosity: What kind of server-hardware do you have for that DB?
Memory, 32/64 bit (hardware,Windows,SQL), # disks and RAID and how are they configured (what files are where)?

ouredp

Hello,

We have about 160 Users with 160 GB Database with heavy posting volume in two companies.

We have migrated end of April from SQL2000 Nav 4.3 client , 32 bit / 4GB memory
on witch we had many locking problems and poor Performance.

to SQL2008 Nav 5.1 Client , 64 bit / 32 GB Memory same SAN system.

-Performance increase was incredible and locking problems reduced drastically.

So it´s difficult to say wich part impacted most on performance. I think hardware is very important for such huge installations.

The NAV/SQL Performance Guide from JA Stryk could be helpfull to measure server performance and give the right solution to the problems.

kriki

Well, your 32bit 4GB system used only 2.7MB (probably). Now you have 64 bit and 32GB memory for DB-cache. That changes a lot for such a DB and number of users.
Also: if you DB was not optimized for SQL, the SIFT created a lot of overhead. With 5.0SP1 the SIFT-overhead is reduced a lot.

themave

This won't help, but it is a word of caution,

do a search on "Help we upgraded and everything is slower"

or something to that effect.

you will see post going back 10 years. As far as I know, every major version upgrade has been slower than the prior.

Here is the typical
Help we upgraded from 2.0 to 2.6 and everything is slower.
Help we upgraded from 2.6 to 3.1 and everything is slower
Help we upgraded from 3.1 to 3.7 and everything is slower
Help we upgraded from 3.7 to 4.0 and everything is slower
Help we upgraded from 4.0 to 5.0 and everything is slower

Now, new hardware and database tuning can help reduce the problem. But I would do a lot of testing yourself, don't rely on them, before you go live. Off coarse this also means you will have to pay most of the cost of the upgrade before you can actually test it. but better that then having your business hit negatively but the upgrade.

gunavs

Here is our configuration.

OS Name Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Server 2003, Enterprise Edition
Version 5.2.3790 Service Pack 2 Build 3790
Other OS Description R2
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer Dell Inc.
System Model PowerEdge 2950
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Intel 2660 Mhz


Storage
Internal HDs 15K SAS
Model (3) DELL MD3000 Multi-Path Disk Device
SCSI Raid 10 (1+0)
Partitions 3
Partition Size 475.06 GB
HDs 15K SAS

45 disks on the array
8 on the internal

Is this what slowing us down? We just upgraded our navision server. But we did move from Native Database in 2.6 to the SQL server version in 3.7 which our VAR said might be one of the problems because our mods were not optimized for the SQL version.

Thank You everyone

kriki

I think you need a real NAV-on-SQL performance specialist like Hyneck Muhlbacher or Jorg Stryck to investigate from close.

You can get a lot of info from the forum to start with, but we can't see your server, we can only guess where the problem could be.
If we would be able to put our hands on your server, we can easily find the problems.

gunavs

Thanks Alain! Most of the performance issues have right now been linked to our customizations. We are trying to evaluate few others. But our CEO would like an assurance that Navision can support more than 200 users with a database size of about 200 GB and should work fine if we resolve our performance issues

generic

Ask MS that question. The way they position, 200 is the upper limit.

There are 2-10 company out that have more users, but they are the exception, and have done a lot of modification and tunning to perform at acceptable level, or most users barely use the system.


So your CEO won't get assurance from MS. They probably will recommend AX.
In fact if you were a new customer, you are no doubt will get given AX

good luck.

David_Singleton

generic wrote:

There are 2-10 company out that have more users,

WOW this is amazing.

So you are saying that EVERY big customer in the world is one of my clients. Since I have worked on at least 10 sites with more than 200 users. :whistle:

gunavs

We did find out couple of companies with more than 200 users. But they have custom modifications to improve their performance. Thanks You everyone.