Peachtree

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LoStMaTt

2[H]4U
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Feb 26, 2003
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Anyone familiar with Peachtree?

Some people here at the office run it and it has been grudgingly slow lately. The database is located on a beast of a server with a Gigabit connection to the clients.

Some queries in Peachtree will come up instantly while others can take 1-3 minutes to pull up.

The database is getting close to 7GB which is quite large IMO!!!!

Is there any kind of maintenance program or something I can run to speed things up?
 
I use ACT!, which is in the same family as peachtree by sage, and here's my experiences.

Defrag the drive

Restart the service on a regular basis

Check for dB file fragments

Sage software sucks. My god. Everything about it is convoluted (from the IT end of things) and any sort of work is painful. Plus their built in SQL server is pretty god aweful.

Call sage and they may be able to help.
 
What are the specs of the machine, what kind of database is it? (flat text, odbc, sql?)
 
Yes, have a few clients that use it.

What hardware is it hosted on? What version of Peachtree? Newer versions (much like Quickbooks)..require a server component installed on the host PC. Older versions just needed something like a mapped drive and keep the files on the server.

Antivirus on your server....set the real time protection to exclude the Peachtree directory shared out on the server. Antivirus on the clients...set the real time protection to exclude network media. (both are standard practice for most business network application setups)
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Yes, have a few clients that use it.

What hardware is it hosted on? What version of Peachtree? Newer versions (much like Quickbooks)..require a server component installed on the host PC. Older versions just needed something like a mapped drive and keep the files on the server.

Antivirus on your server....set the real time protection to exclude the Peachtree directory shared out on the server. Antivirus on the clients...set the real time protection to exclude network media. (both are standard practice for most business network application setups)
Click to expand...

The server is a dual quad core xeon custom built with 4GB of mem.....but its running XP Pro (was that way when I got here).

Its running on SATA drives. Antivirus has anything Peachtree/PVSW related excluded from ESET scanning.

It has the server component installed on the system.

I can upgrade the OS to Server 2003 R2 if that would improve performance at all.
 
What else is this...uh...."server" doing? Any other "server" jobs this overpowered desktop is trying to do?

I'm starting to wonder about other concurrent use hard drive hits, how many users total, what other "data" is shared from it, etc.

Is XP running with the "background services" mode instead of foreground apps? Makes it run a little more like a server OS.

LoStMaTt said:
The server is a dual quad core xeon custom built with 4GB of mem.....but its running XP Pro (was that way when I got here).

Its running on SATA drives. Antivirus has anything Peachtree/PVSW related excluded from ESET scanning.

It has the server component installed on the system.

I can upgrade the OS to Server 2003 R2 if that would improve performance at all.
Click to expand...
 
This is all the server does. Peachtree

No more than 3 users at once.

Already running in Background Services mode.
 
The SATA drives...they running RAID? If so, hardware or software?
If not RAID, drive 1 for the OS and drive 2 for the data share?

Exclusion for antivirus protection...network media on clients?

Have you run the database "purge"? This maintenance removes old transactions...which speeds up times in such functions are reports. The built in native purge wizard does an OK job. There are some companies out there which do substantially more thorough purges for you, at a cost naturally. 7 gigs is..wow..huge. Might be worth it.

For just 3 users...the expense of going to a full server OS might not be justified. One thing I can think of, for minimal cost, is to pickup a pair of WD Raptor 10,000rpm hard drives..and clone the image over to them.

I'd probably look at installing the latest Intel drivers for the motherboard, as well as any Intel Matrix or Intel Application Accelerator software which your SATA controllers would support.

This is a dedicated box in the corner, right? Nobody sits down at it and uses it as a workstation?
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
The SATA drives...they running RAID? If so, hardware or software?
If not RAID, drive 1 for the OS and drive 2 for the data share?
Click to expand...

You got me!......:mad: Had never looked before until now but it is running the Windows Based Software RAID.

So...hmm what to do what to do. I guess I'll have to come in one weekend and copy the files to somewhere else and remove the software raid.

I'll start from there and see what improvements come out of that.
 
I think I'd look towards their future...any plans for growth, if a server will ever be utilized on the network...but minimal cost on upgrading this rig might be a good idea.

IMO software RAID is hurting the performance of this "server"..esp working with a huge database file.

I think a minimal cost that brings substantial performance increase....to buy another year or two on this PC...

*Break the software RAID mirror.
*Format the 2nd hard drive...share it out as a DATA drive...reinstall the PeachTree server to that drive, so it's on a separate spindle from the OS.

*Purchase a pair of WD Raptor 10K drives, the 16 or better yet 32 meg cache models. Clone image to those. WD Raptor drives are enterprise grade 5 year hard drives with over 1.2 million hours MTBF. I'd have more confidence in the reliability of those in non-RAID, versus some other drives doing software RAID. It's just WinXP with 1 program anyways, as long as you're backing up each day, if a drive tanks....several quick hours to rebuild and done.
 
I'm going to order one of those raptor drives today.

Once I get it I will do the following:

Copy all of the data files to new hard drive

Remove software RAID

Reestablish shares (keeping the same name)

Hopefully that will save me from having to go to each workstation and reinstalling/changing paths
 
LoStMaTt said:
I'm going to order one of those raptor drives today.

Once I get it I will do the following:

Copy all of the data files to new hard drive

Remove software RAID

Reestablish shares (keeping the same name)

Hopefully that will save me from having to go to each workstation and reinstalling/changing paths
Click to expand...

Shouldn't have to.....as long as the computer name and share name stay the same...UNC or mapped drives will "roll with the flow".

Just uninstall the PT server part...reinstall it to the new "D" drive (or whatever drive letter you pick for the second hard drive)....such as D:\PTree
Or if the current pair of drives is setup RAID 1 with split partitions..C and D..makes it even easier....
Copy D partition to new second hard drive.....delete the second partition of first hard drive.....when "cloning" the image to the new drives using TI or Ghost..just resize the first one to suck up the empty space. "Break" the mirror first before cloning.
 
software raid is probably running slower then a single drive.

you can try to just use Acronis to clone the drive to a new faster raptor, then just remove software raid and put the single drive in.

However make sure you have backup.

Moving foward however you should throw on some Server 03 and a hardware raid card.

Maybe pitch 2 ideas. Could bring you in some money if you sell em SBS 2003 set that up with domain, folder redirection, hardware raid, pop3 connector. They may like the benefits and go ahead.
 
So here is my adjusted plan.

Install WD Raptor, leave software raid intact for now. Copy all PTree files to new WD Raptor and move the shares there. Once everything is good to go with peachtree i can do what I want with the other drives as they will no longer be needed for anything.
 
I'd seriously ditch the software RAID. Can you imagine the overhead of it keeping up with a 7 gig database file? :eek:

Break mirror, get 2x reboots in.
Clone to 2x separate Raptors...one raptor is C drive purely for OS and database engine, the second raptor is the D drive for the actual database. Having those 2x loads spread across 2x different spindles will give you MUCH better performance than having a C and D partition on the same drive spindle.

IMO those 2x steps will give you a substantial performance increase for the least amount of work and expense possible.

IMO leaving software RAID intact, and having the 2x partitions on the same spindle...will not give you much of a performance increase.
 
I think you missed the point.

The point is that the only thing on that software raid is the peachtree share. Once I move them over to the new raptor is when I'll take down the software raid.

Basically I just don't want to touch the files until everything is fully functional on the new raptor.

Current Drive Layout:

sftraid.JPG
 
My experience with transitioning hard drives is never actually modify the original drives. Whatever you do, make it so that if your transition goes bad, you can just drop in the old drives. If this slightly increases the cost of the transition, then fine!

Some RAID setups don't like to be fiddled with. Your mileage may vary on that, but it's a hit or miss, especially with non enterprise grade RAID hardware.

Do what was earlier recommended and you should be good...

* Buy a GOOD hardware RAID card (eg. 3ware <model depends on what bus you can support, PCI-E is best)
* Buy 2 x 10,000 RPM Raptors (preferably with 32MB of cache)
* Install RAID Card and new drives. Create a RAID1. Format and initialize.
* Take 'server' off network. Stop all SQL services and similar data services.
* Preferably use something like acronis true image to clone your current data drive to the new array. If you do not have this sort of software, then use something like syncToy to 'echo' the data from the old drive to the new drive. This will preserve all file permissions that are set.
* Make note of all shares and share permissions on old drives.
* Give old data drives a new drive letter
* Give new data drives the old drive letter
* Remove shares. Recreate shares on new drive. Recreate appropriate share permissions.
* Restart all services that you stopped earlier.
* Put server back on network
* Check program performance from a client machine. Check that all shares and whatnot are functioning properly.
* If performance is still not adequate, then look into purging old data or similar. Before you purge make sure to backup. After you purge, make sure to check with someone very familar with peachtree to make sure the purge did not remove any data they need.

Hopefully at this point you'll have happy users.

Have them buy you a beer (and write you a paycheck)

Cheers.

LoStMaTt said:
I think you missed the point.

The point is that the only thing on that software raid is the peachtree share. Once I move them over to the new raptor is when I'll take down the software raid.

Basically I just don't want to touch the files until everything is fully functional on the new raptor.

Current Drive Layout:

sftraid.JPG
[/QUOTE
Click to expand...
 
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