Exchange server woes

I

insanarchist

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 3, 2004
Messages
1,387
I just started working at a Dr.'s office a couple of weeks ago. When I got here, I was shocked and disappointed to learn they're using Microsoft Outlook's calendar and an Exchange server to keep track of all of their appointments! As you can imagine, with several years of appointments, several thousand patients (stored as contacts), and 4 very computer-illiterate users using this thing, combined with their 866mhz, 512MB RAM exchange server, this thing is pretty damned slow, specifically when doing patient searches. At any given time, 2-5 people are making/checking appointments, searching for patients, etc.

While the obvious (and correct) answer would be to get software custom-tailored to their (our) needs, we need a temporary solution to get us through the next couple months (which are very busy and, thus, not a very good time to do a complete system overhaul. I did some mild experimentation and have gotten some inconclusive results. Each of the terminal machines has only a 500mhz P3 or Celeron with 128 MB ram, and the server is an 866 mhz P3 w/ 512 MB ram. I can't tell whether it is lack of processor on the server end, or lack of memory, or slow hard drives (a Raid1 SCSI 160 array) or what.

Help!



I wasn't sure of where to put this, so I figured Networking & Security is as good as anywhere.
 
how big is the info store? Where are the contacts/appointments being stored?

Have you enabled performance monitoring on the server and then run tests (searching for a patient?)
 
I forgot to add this disclaimer: I don't know much about exchange.

That being said, since the company is trying to make me their new "everything that could possibly be related to computers/technology" guy, where would yall recommend starting if I wanted to learn about exchange?
 
Buy some time by cramming that sucker with RAM...max out the RAM the server can support. It's cheap enough these days...couple of hundred bucks for the RAM, and a couple of hundred bucks for your time. Then get them to commit to a date to find, and implement, some medical scheduling software. There's a plethora of it out there (hit up Google and you yourself can find a few dozen in minutes)...basic medical scheduling software is not expensive.

Sandbox some free trials on a workstation, narrow it down to a few, have them contact the sales of those finalists and let the sales people do their dog 'n pony show..pick one..and onwards you go.

Doctors offices need speed for their staff to work with on the phone, even on a honking system, I can't see how Exchange could do that job for them...it's not made for that kind of usage. Don't continue to try to support the Exchange approach for them.
 
RAM RAM RAM for starters

1g min and do the /3g switch on the boot INI - exchange will eat ram ! so get 2g's if you can

2nd - is it 1 single harddrive? that will KILL peformance what is ideal is

1 - windows / exchange
2 - datastore
3 - log files


3 harddrives is a good start for a well performing exchange server - 3 seperate harddrives.

As said above - Exchange is meant to be a Mail server / shared calander system - NOT a database storage system for medical companies customers.

Heck - laern MySQL / Access and use an ODBC connectors and MAKE them a new system :) amazing what Access can do with a MySQL / SQL database.
 
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