Hi Andrew, I would like to share my experience with a site that we were recently invited to review who upgraded to PractiX about 8 weeks ago.
The systems has just been running like a dog, to the point of un-usable (long delays) from the word go. Doctors and staff were literally pulling their hair out. IBA performed a pre-check of the system to ensure it met minimum requirements prior to upgrade and matches your current configuration. They started with an IBM Server 1 x 2.8Ghz XEON, WIN2003SBS, 2GB RAM, RAID 5 (143GB - 15k rpm) and were recommended by the current IT Support company to install an additional XEON CPU, up all the workstation (21 off them) to 512MB, Gigabyte Switch a lot of $$$ spent - same outcome. Database size roughly 7GB Pass the buck around began (Hardware <-> Software), without either party willing to go the extra mile and collaboratively resolve the problem in the best interest of the patient care and their client. We identified over 15 issues which potentially contributed to the problem. IBA were provided the first opportunity to review and perform post conversion activities after we identified 1% HDD space left. Now with 70Gb free - no improvement. After resolving the other 14 remaining issues - slight improvement. Even setting up another server - same outcome. This conclusively showed that the issue must be with the databases themselves. Referred the matter back to IBA were it was suggested that a performance (index) check was performed on the database. 24 hours later, index were optimised and problem fixed !!!! At this stage, we still are suggesting that the Server could do with an additional 1.0 - 2.0 Gb Ram as memory utilisation is at 90 - 95%. Looking at memory utilization : WINDOWS 2003 500Mb Ram Exchange 540Mb Plexus Classic 150Mb MS-SQLSERVER Grabs whatever it can (to the max 1.0Gb) it seems to grab about 75-150Mb RAM per user. We repeatedly get mspservices.exe (amongst other apps) crashing due to insufficient memory or it's a possible memory leak. It just seems that MS-SQL does not release memory in a timely fashion. I'm unable to get a definitive answer from IBA as to what memory PracticX ideally requires for service MS-SQL with a 7Gb database + factoring growth MS-SQL offers memory management tools, so we have allocated a fixed amount and that has resolved the problem. This site has been setup with a single Drive C: partition ....WINDOWS 2003 SBS should be ideally setup with separate partitions : C: WIN2003 O/S E: Exchange P: Practice Management Software S: Swap file This will ensure that databases files are less prone in becoming fragmented, as MS-SQL grow automatically at a rate of 10% (can be adjusted) The site has been managed by an IT Support company with monthly SLA in place - paying excessively top $$$, onsite once and apparently SLA are performed remotely - log files tell me differently. Sad to say Alert and Monitoring was disabled which revealed the true state of the system once enabled : Failed backups, server re-starts (middle of the night) with a dodgy UPS, applications crashing, you name it - it was there. Hope live day all goes well.. Cheers, Jerry Karpluk -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Cameron [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, 18 November 2005 1:06 AM To: 'General Practice Computing Group Talk' Subject: [GPCG_TALK] A techies view of PractiX A quick blog. A client is converting to PractiX after 6-8 years running MSS Classic. So first we replaced the network, server, pc's and switch. Dell (single xeon) server running win2003 SBS with 2 gig ram and SCSI Raid. Dell Optiplex's with 1 gig ram, winXP and 17" TFT's. After it was bedded in for a few months and the bugs ironed out they scheduled PracitX to be installed. (that way the vendor can't blame the network if it all goes pear shaped or just runs like a dog) The install/training plan is spread over 2 weeks which is good. Installation first, then train, train and train some more. Then next week the big conversion. 7 gig of data. *Annoying thing number one; why can't the workstation install be just like installing MS word or any other off the shelf product ? Why do I have to give authenticated users full rights to the local MSP folder on their pc. X 16 pc's. ? (i have better things to do with my time) *Annoying thing number two; Why does the OBDC details have to be entered manually, with the obilatory typo's and errors ? Shit even HCN manages to do that whilst installing PS3 !!! Good things: Boy PractiX is fast :) Hooray the updates for items numbers etc is done from within the admin module ! It goes zips off to the web and downloads and then installs. Looks like the wks install stays inside its MSP directory and doesn't splatter itself into the system dir. Hmmn there are still some features in Classic that aren't in PractiX. Still I'm not looking forward to go live day one little bit. Hopefully I will remember to blog a little bit every other day. Cheers, Andrew Cameron. _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk __________ NOD32 1.1289 (20051116) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
