mrbios Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 How big are your sims databases? We're getting a lot of complaints about the performance of ours, but we don't think any data manager has ever done any archiving. The database is currently sitting at 7.1gb!!! and reports just take farrrr too long.
zag Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 3.29gb for Sims 572mb for discover 900 student school. Never done any archiving as far as I know. We use lesson monitor ect.
localzuk Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 (edited) After about 9 years of having it in our (around) 600 pupil school, we're up to 2.1Gb. So, 7Gb could very well be a normal size to be honest - if your school is bigger or if you've been using SIMS .Net for longer. It might simply be that your database needs a re-index I'd guess. But SIMS speed can vary quite a lot. Certain tasks can really chomp resources -importing CTFs for example. What have you got it running on resources wise? Edited January 23, 2015 by localzuk
mrbios Posted January 23, 2015 Author Posted January 23, 2015 Fair enough maybe it's normal then, but i just can't work out why reports are taking sooooooooooo long. They took a good 5 minutes to run at least, i've done the indexing patch in the past, the servers performing fine and constantly has resources available, the PC I've tested a report on is more than quick enough. Just can't find a way of speeding this up. Just checked and the two huge tables in our database are: att_lesson_mark which is 1.8gb att_mark_normalised which is 3.8gb then there's also asm_result (two of them) which are both 400-500mb each. I'll look into this more after food....lol
localzuk Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 How much RAM and what disk(s) have you got the database stored on?
mrbios Posted January 23, 2015 Author Posted January 23, 2015 How much RAM and what disk(s) have you got the database stored on? 16gb ram, 8vcpu and SSD datastore. I could do with upping the ram to 20 or 24gb i think and see how that goes, but even then, 3.8gb for a single table seems excessively large to me.
halbaradkenafin Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 Last job had about 4GB after about 9 years or so and no maintenance. We did some work with SIMS support and doing the various house keeping and archiving tasks and made some big improvements.
FragglePete Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 6.3Gb here for SIMS.mdf - 1200-ish students in total. Pete
jb2201 Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 40GB.... I am starting to get a bit worried now! Our LA manages it..
sllorep Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 Mine seems quite high compared to some of yours then... 8.13GB SIMS 3GB Discover 0.8GB SOLUS3 We do use most (if not all) parts of SIMS. Lesson Monitor, InTouch, etc etc Never done an archive to my knowledge and... I've just checked and we've got data starting Sept 1990!!! 16GB RAM
localzuk Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 40GB.... I am starting to get a bit worried now! Our LA manages it.. By 'eck! That's huge!
dapaulio Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 40GB.... I am starting to get a bit worried now! Our LA manages it.. 40GB??? ouch is that the mdf or ldf alone or combined. # of Students ~ 1300 using lesson monitor etc etc our mdf = 6GB our ldf =1.5GB our ldf use to be in excess of 50GB. you can shrink the ldf in SQL studio management and is fairly simple and routine but ensure that you have a full backup of SIMS that you know you can recover to otherwise S*** will well and truly hit the fan Your ldf is huge because your SQL database is set to Full recovery so it doesn't truncate the logs once a backup is taken. If your mdf is huge then your staff really need to do some housekeeping. I would liaise with your Sims support team to help if you are unfamiliar with SQL and SIMS. As for responsiveness within SIMS, im sure I can speak for majority of similar sized schools will all have responsive issues general within certain modules of SIMS, that is the capita way. We have had countless calls open to capita re performance and all we get is perform housekeeping, reindex patch and validate membership. if they are just reports that take ages to run, redesign the report from scratch. we had a couple that were years old and apparently SIMS upgrades can impact some of the older reports. Hope this helps
john Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 16gb ram, 8vcpu and SSD datastore. I could do with upping the ram to 20 or 24gb i think and see how that goes, but even then, 3.8gb for a single table seems excessively large to me. 8vCPUs will not be helping your issue, without getting into the science behind it (which will destroy your mind as its all about Numa nodes and then how virtual and real CPUs are different etc...), 4vCPUs is the most you should ever put on a VM due to that and if you go above it its likely to have the complete opposite affect to what you think it will. 1
matt40k Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 Just checked and the two huge tables in our database are: att_lesson_mark which is 1.8gb att_mark_normalised which is 3.8gb Look at the documentation, lesson reg or something. There is a section about archiving attendance marks, you have to select which years you wish to archive then run a command line (obs run out of hours as it canes the disc). 1
mrbios Posted January 23, 2015 Author Posted January 23, 2015 (edited) 8vCPUs will not be helping your issue, without getting into the science behind it (which will destroy your mind as its all about Numa nodes and then how virtual and real CPUs are different etc...), 4vCPUs is the most you should ever put on a VM due to that and if you go above it its likely to have the complete opposite affect to what you think it will. Thank you, i didn't know that Will change it back down to 4 tonight. Look at the documentation, lesson reg or something. There is a section about archiving attendance marks, you have to select which years you wish to archive then run a command line (obs run out of hours as it canes the disc). Documentation? For sims? What is this nonsense? I shall have a look, where would one find this magical documentation? Edited January 23, 2015 by mrbios
matt40k Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 (edited) Documentation? For sims? What is this nonsense? I shall have a look, where would one find this magical documentation? Logon to SIMS, the hit the documentation button and it'll take you off to magically land of nod, I mean, the Capita documentation centre. 8vCPUs will not be helping your issue, without getting into the science behind it (which will destroy your mind as its all about Numa nodes and then how virtual and real CPUs are different etc...), 4vCPUs is the most you should ever put on a VM due to that and if you go above it its likely to have the complete opposite affect to what you think it will. Something to do with the fact if the Guest has 8 vCPU it has to wait for 8 threads to be physically available, which will be less likely then 4. Edited January 23, 2015 by matt40k
john Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 (edited) Something to do with the fact if the Guest has 8 vCPU it has to wait for 8 threads to be physically available, which will be less likely then 4. There is a bit more to it than the just do no more than 4 I should point out before someone shouts out that its not quite that accurate as it depends on your original CPU, how many cores it has etc... but as a rule of thumb that should stand you in a reasonable position you shouldnt' need more than 4 virtual CPUs and also ensure you use Sockets not Cores in the vCPU settings as Sockets are more efficient than Cores in virtualsation so you would do 4 Sockets of 1 core rather than 1 socket with 4 cores. Edited January 23, 2015 by john 1
mrbios Posted January 23, 2015 Author Posted January 23, 2015 There is a bit more to it than the just do no more than 4 I should point out before someone shouts out that its not quite that accurate as it depends on your original CPU, how many cores it has etc... but as a rule of thumb that should stand you in a reasonable position you shouldnt' need more than 4 virtual CPUs and also ensure you use Sockets not Cores in the vCPU settings as Sockets are more efficient than Cores in virtualsation so you would do 4 Sockets of 1 core rather than 1 socket with 4 cores. I'm learning something new today then I've set it at 2 sockets each with 4 cores, and you cna see where that logic comes from...copying the physical design in to the virtual. Thanks for the education @john Potentially stupid question, should sims be set to simple or full recovery mode on the database?
mrbios Posted January 23, 2015 Author Posted January 23, 2015 Archive Attendance data appears to have never been run and the data goes back to 1996/1997, will run that tonight lol
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