SIMS 64 bit Incompatability

The cheapest and easiest (hurrah!) solution our school has found to give all staff access to SIMS is via terminal services. Now a slight trifling problem is that most of SIMS printing is done by outdated 16 bit software.

The IT technicians tell me that SIMS is already running on emulated mode on the 64 bit server and that emulating 16 bit code on a 64 bit server just isn't feasible.

TTPRINT.exe seems to be the main offender here, but it would be nice to run other antiquated components of SIMS. Any solutions, ideas, etc?

Its as they say I am afraid. 64 bit can emulate 32 bit and 32 bit can emulate 16 bit but 64 cant do 16. The only way to do it would be to use a 32 bit server OS but then you wont be able to use all the nice ram that will be in the machine therefore impacting performance.
You may end up needing 2 servers for what that 1 does now.

how about installing a 32bit virtual server on the 64bit hardware, then installing SIMS into that

There's a third way. Run your 64bit OS on the bare hardware. Run VMware on top of that. Then run two 32bit virtualised terminal servers on top of that.

Best of both worlds :)

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Originally Posted by CyberNerd

how about installing a 32bit virtual server on the 64bit hardware, then installing SIMS into that

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Hmm interesting. What kind of overheads would that be on performance though?
I am interested as we are going this route ourselves soon.

VMware claim about 2% performance overhead. I'd be more pessimistic and say around 10% depending on load.

Mind you this would all be easier if Capita sorted it out :) .

True. Even so I think we're stuck with 32bit for a while. I forsee many virtualised 32bit terminal servers being built. :D

I wonder if they will subsidise the extra licencing though ? :P

Are they planning on releasing a 64 bit version of Sims?

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Are they planning on releasing a 64 bit version of Sims?

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I think it's inevitable they will at some point. I've also heard there will be a browser based version of Sims.

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I've also heard there will be a browser based version of Sims.

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I have also been lead to believe that. It will be very useful although the full client will need to be installed on our machines anyway for pars .net.

Capita has only officially supported 64bit since the August '08 release.

Capita has a web version, it's called Learning Gateway, version 1 is being dropped soon, version 2, is basically, a Sharepoint add in. I believe you can do pretty much everything on it as you can in the full bloat applications (well v.7 - .net) so do expect to see Nova-T in there anytime soon ;) The closes that'll come to is the HTML cover for staff. For got what it's official called. Brain's melted, not use to all this sun!

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Originally Posted by matt40k

Capita has a web version, it's called Learning Gateway, version 1 is being dropped soon, version 2, is basically, a Sharepoint add in. I believe you can do pretty much everything on it as you can in the full bloat applications (well v.7 - .net) so do expect to see Nova-T in there anytime soon ;)

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WRT Learning Gateway and inhouse installs, Capita appear to charge £4k for the app and then another £4k to install and configure sharepoint + the LG addon. According to the Capita forums they won't support self-installed Learning Gateway. http://support.capitaes.co.uk/newfor...91%E6%9B%D7%E7

(and yes, the forums make horrible links)

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Sorry, link unavailable

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Anyway, I knew it was alot. Ideally, your LEA would have supported Learning Gateway, so you can a BIG discount. However I've yet to find any LEA that support it. I know most just direct it to Capita.

I did hear that Capita doesn't have good support as most of there staff have yet to have training.

Personally the TCO isn't as much as going for some other product. You think you've got Exchange\Sharepoint\Active Directory\SIMS all working together. The point of education is to teach people skills they will use in the "real world". Teaching them how to use Sharepoint is quite useful as it's highly possible that where they moved to (small - large businesses) will use Sharepoint (or simpliar) rather then some custom application that is only used in education, such as DigitalBrain etc.