SIMS Database & Log File

[indiegirl]

How strange,

This morning, my SIMS.mdf file is 800mb still, but the SIMS.ldf has grown to 1Gb already 8O

That's after shrinking it to 1mb yesterday evening and backing up the database last night (all went fine).

Do we think that an upgrade will fix this.. Capita almost refused to support my call yesterday as we're not up to date. I *would* do an update, if I knew how to do one successfully (murky waters for me, I'm afraid)...

Any easy suggestions? I know I should run Solus (is that right?) with no users on SIMS (so after 3.30 today as everyone but me clears off home), does running Solus on the server automatically update everything?

(I feel really thick where SIMS is concerned, think I'll be getting me on some courses soon)

[webman]

Do you not have any SIMS support from your LEA IT support team?

[indiegirl]

*whistles* I have noooooooo idea...

See? This is how good the handover to me was for the holidays (not).

Don't worry - I will bug Capita until I get the right answers if I have to (apparently we pay for their support...)

[webman]

Welllll...... just do the best you can and definately hassle Capita until you get the answers you want, that's what you pay them for :P What else can you do if the NM isn't going to make adequate arrangements for his absence?

[DMcCoy]

I think there must be some misconfigured setting somewhere, perhaps it is running in full logging mode. My ldf is still only 1.2MB today, with a 820MB mdb. The ldf will get more full depending on the number of transactions going on as its a log of most types. What do you use sims for? Assesment manager? Lesson monitor?

[indiegirl]

Currently, we use sims for assessment manager, some are still using Nova-T, and we have a Bromcom system that pulls its data from sims as well.

Other than that, it's just cover, timetables and students personal data...

[pete]

Not particularly easy suggestion....but it'll give you a safety net for the real thing.

Grab a workstation (stick a spare disk in the NM's box) and set up a test SIMS server to play with - we have one here running on a laptop. Once you've got a test environment up, you're free to try stuff out without breaking anything critical.

When you do patch the server through solus, it'll push out patches to the workstations - depending on your setup this will either work the next time a user run sims, or you may need to walk to each workstation, map the SIMS network drive and run simsload.exe.

If you haven't got a logon to capitaes.co.uk (supportnet / forums) get one. As you've found out, telephone support from capita is very hit and miss.

Go to www.capitasolus.co.uk and sit down for a bit of reading.

[indiegirl]

Ta muchly for those suggestions.

Looking at Solus, we have a list as long as one's arm of upgrades (and that's before even considering patches...

3pm today, I'm gonna just bite the bullet and go with it... spoke to my old NM at my old school who gave me a whistle stop suggestion of what he'd do in my situation, so am gonna go for it.

Step one - copy the entire SIMS folder over to another area, so that if all goes t!ts up, I'll copy it back and hopefully no harm done.
Step two - backup Sims from within sims itself.
Step three - run Solus... and run.


At least I have a weekend to sort it if it all goes horribly wrong.

[spc-rocket]

hi indiegirl,

This behaviour is linked to having sims and bromcom system. We get this as well and it only happens when you have bromcom and sims.

Our LEA support has told us to take a backup and this will shrink it down again, which it does but at one stage (before we knew about this issue) the ldf file was 8Gb! when the DB was only 800Mb!.

We haven't found a solution for this but our bursar takes a backup everyday using a tool developed by our LEA which uses the sims backup to kick in and therefore the ldf file gets shrunk again.

You may find that when you do an upgrade that the file shinks as well, the reason for this is that just before the upgrade it does a backup of sims.

Knowing capita and sims, i'm willing to blame blame and more blame capita for these kinds of cockups. Really feel like giving the capita developed a good punch in the faces as the software has so much upgrade and patches that its becomming a nightmare for us to get the upgrades done.


HTH,

Ashok.

[DMcCoy]

I have bromcom and don't appear to experience this issue. ldf has only grown to 1.7MB so far today.

Do you not have any SIMS support from your LEA IT support team?

If i remember indiegirl's school was calssed as a sinlge site. Licencing and support direct with Capita.

Indigirl

In the old days the school used a third party company for the really big SIMS stuff. e.g the initial setup of SIMS.NET. The chap who came out was excellent. Cant remeber though who they were, bursa might have a record though.

Get them out and invoice the NM

[webman]

Wouldn't like to think we had ourselves as the sole SIMS personnel... Capita site is OK but we really need the physical presence available of people who know more than we do (myself = no training, NM = a little).

[wesleyw]

Make sure you copy the MDF and LDF files from the MS SQL directory too Indiegirl then you'll be alright the backup will bring the old sims back and you'll have an up-to-date copy of the data. Also because it'll run a backup of the SIMS db first you can always roll back to the previous version!

[NetworkGeezer]

Make sure you copy the MDF and LDF files from the MS SQL directory too Indiegirl then you'll be alright the backup will bring the old sims back and you'll have an up-to-date copy of the data. Also because it'll run a backup of the SIMS db first you can always roll back to the previous version!

You need to stop the MS SQL Server Service to do this or windows will not be able to copy the files across. That's why SYSMAN and DBATTACH are normally the recommended option as they are online backups which do not require downtime.

[indiegirl]

Yep, I was aware that I'd need to stop the SQL service... just off to click now :-)