SIMS Slow? Running on good spec server

[Sheridan]

We seem to be getting complaints our SIMS is 'slow' - more recently. Its running on a VM with 16 Cores and 64Gb am (for 1600 students) so isn't exactly a slug

 

I've looked and the CPU never seems to max out at more than 70% - normally running at 10-30% - the RAM is hogged by SQL server anyway, but its a dedicated VM so only runs SIMS

 

I've shrunk the database and its around 12GB now, but we're still getting complaints about certain things being slow (census etc!)

 

I've noticed a lot of people default to the Student teacher view, which shows a load of graphs, which obviously compile as you login. Apart from that I'm not sure if theres anything I can do to speed things up?

 

I'd be interested to hear if anyone's had similar complaints, and if they found a reason/solution?

[synaesthesia]

Yes, plenty of complaints particularly when large reports are being run, census absolutely; our answer has always been the same; the current SIMS is a dog from an era long gone, akin to loading games from a cassette deck and about as snappy. And likewise, 64GB ram, all SSD, 16 cores on a physical, dedicated machine, with all the crap they try and push on us to improve (reindex patches run often, shrinking the LDFs, telling us it's by design, SQL memory tweaks yada yada yada) the only way it'll improve is a new version.

[Sheridan]

Yes, plenty of complaints particularly when large reports are being run, census absolutely; our answer has always been the same; the current SIMS is a dog from an era long gone, akin to loading games from a cassette deck and about as snappy. And likewise, 64GB ram, all SSD, 16 cores on a physical, dedicated machine, with all the crap they try and push on us to improve (reindex patches run often, shrinking the LDFs, telling us it's by design, SQL memory tweaks yada yada yada) the only way it'll improve is a new version.

 

I suspected as much - when I first moved SIMS to the VM (from a crusty old physical server) there was barely any performance gain, now two years later the complaints are starting!

[hardtailstar]

Same problems here. Any large reports being run and it slows it down.

[Domino]

out of interest have you set resource constraints in SQl itself?

 

If it's left to grab all it can it might limit the SIMS application layers access to resource, causing an end user slowdown.

 

I'm not saying it is the issue, just something to consider.

[synaesthesia]

Don't think we have, are there any guidelines for that?

[Sheridan]

We have capped SQL Server at 54 GB out of the 64Gb Ram available, but it just grabs all of it on boot anyway!

[Domino]

We have capped SQL Server at 54 GB out of the 64Gb Ram available, but it just grabs all of it on boot anyway!

 

Well, that's concerning...it does take a restart to take effect, but if it's nabbing it on boot that's weird.

 

With regards to guidelines...it's a bit changeable and requires a bit of tuning. I normally assign 70% of RAM to SQL and work up or down from there as the app/sql needs dictate. A bit about that here: https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2011/09/sysadmins-guide-microsoft-sql-server-memory/

 

I should add it's been a long time since I've dealt with SIMS and I'm more talking in general terms - Capita may have their own guidelines?

Edited October 26, 2018 by Domino

[adhutton]

We are having the exact same problems.

 

It's been referred to Capita but they don't seem to have any answers.

 

We've tried all of the usual 'fixes' as described above, but still getting problems.....

 

It seems to have been worse since the Summer 2018 update.

 

Andrew

[Sheridan]

Yes, our complaints have been mainly in the last 3-5 months, and seem to be more regular now than ever before!

[timbo343]

We are battling with with SIMS at the moment and have this thread open with my issues http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/199237-sims-server-performance-query.html

 

It seems to be since the Summer update but Capita have said through our support:

 

 

heard back from Capita support and they have suggested that this is very much an environmental issue and have suggested the following:

 

 

· Asking somebody else to login to their SIMS on the same machine and see if the speed replicates.

 

· Try and get the user to login on someone else’s Windows user and login into SIMS as their own or another user and see if the speed issue occurs.

 

· Make a new Windows user profile and test the user on that Windows account seeing if the issue replicates.

 

 

You might have tried all this but Capita support have advised it definitely sounds like an environmental issue.

 

 

I'm waiting to see what the next update fixes.

[Sheridan]

I’m going to run another reindex and see if that’s helps. That’s pretty much all capital suggest these days.

[timbo343]

Update to this after installing the Autumn 2018 update.

 

The database upgrade toook about 30 mins on the server and the VM originally had 4 virtual cores assigned to it.

 

Now with the autumn update, things seem to be a bit better but i've also assigned an extra 2 cores to the VM, so either the Autumn update has improved performance or adding an extra 2 VM processing cores has had a dramatic effect.

[chazzy2501]

I have an untested theory that SIMS prefers CPU speed over cores. When I went from 2 to 4 virtual cores reports were slower? I know that the XEON CPU on the host can boost higher with only 2 cores than 4 so that's what I concluded. What I can definitely say is that doubling the core count didn't improve reports at all. (still I only use 8gb RAM for 800 pupils)

[matt40k]

A lot of the parallelization happened around SQL2014 and Capita's answer to updating the SQL code was to get folks to set the database compatibility to SQL 2012. IE, not do the work. SQL Server 2017 express is limited to lesser of 1 socket or 4 cores. Currently, the bulk of Capita customers are primary schools who will be using Express. So can't imagine it's high on the list until SIMS8 goes belly up and they need to focus effort on retaining SIMS7 customers (read Highs).