7andY Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 Is anyone using the Behaviour Managent Module for Facility/CMIS? If you are, can you tell me: Does it work successfully? Are you using the recommended spec server (including 8GB RAM on a 32-bit system...)? Does it slow your system down? We appear to be having a difficulty tracking down a problem with the Behaviour Management Module, and it seems Serco won't help us out because we aren't using the recommended spec. Cheers, Andy E.
scholarpack Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 Does Windows 32 bit support more than 4GB RAM?
sister_annex Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 Does Windows 32 bit support more than 4GB RAM? 8Gb RAM on a 32Bit system.... surely not
7andY Posted February 16, 2011 Author Posted February 16, 2011 Yes - this is direct from their spec sheet. We have raised it with them, and they are adamant that this is the requirement, even though it will leave 4.3GB RAM lying idle. Go figure...
sister_annex Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 Amazing.. Amazingly Crap.... @7andY have you got a link to the spec sheet? Not that I am doubting you at all, but I would like to chuckle with it in front of my eyes
scholarpack Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 Why don't you tell them if they won't help you, you'll dump them and go with a behaviour management company that are more reasonable...soon have someone available then I bet
RichH Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 Recommended spec or not. You're paying for their service, and their service should include support. How do they win over clients with that approach?
JPS Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 I understand this is a pain, but can we be careful guys. If you purchased a piece of software and expected to run it on hardware X but in fact that didnt meet min requirements, would you be on the phone to whoever appropriate, expecting the issue to be fixed? @7andY - speak to your sales/account manager and make them aware of the issue, in my experience, they will endeavour to help where possible, ie apply some pressure to support. 1
Banjo Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 Is anyone using the Behaviour Managent Module for Facility/CMIS? If you are, can you tell me: Does it work successfully? Are you using the recommended spec server (including 8GB RAM on a 32-bit system...)? Does it slow your system down? We appear to be having a difficulty tracking down a problem with the Behaviour Management Module, and it seems Serco won't help us out because we aren't using the recommended spec. Cheers, Andy E. Facility shouldn't need 8GB to run BM. How have you got Facility installed? 1) SQL server + Facility - Admin.exe 2) Eportal Sever The most the Admin.exe will be able to allocated is 4GB leaving the other 4GB for the OS.
jonawd Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 We have bought into the Behaviour Module, but not yet gone live. However, until the Summer we are running an Old Server 2003 box with 4GB of ram and were having some really serious performance issues, mostly in ePortal. This server ran everything (SQL + Facility + ePortal) I went mad and had a Dual Processing 16GB server running Server 2008 Enterprise, and problems were solved! In my experience, ePortal does suffer on a low Memory machine.
john Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 (edited) Does Windows 32 bit support more than 4GB RAM? Yes it does, Server 2003 32bit did support more than 4GB ram, as has been discussed on here numerous times, you had to make a boot.ini switch change about how its allocated but it is possible to use more than 4gb ram in it. I also want to say that, as a long time Serco user, and somone who has had issues in the past, your support experience doesn't sound like the one I usually receive. Although from talking to others who use the BM Module, it does need a beefy system to run, I can understand that if you have an underspecified server that Serco are asking you to address that issue as well, I don't know how far under the spec your server is, how many BM entries a day you are making and number of users in the DB etc but they all contribute to the needs of the server spec so you could well need to add more ram etc to your hardware. Edited February 16, 2011 by john added the support bit in 1
michael2k6 Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 Hi all, @scholarpack, sister_annex, 7andY 8gb of RAM can be utilised by a 32bit machine using enterprise edition of windows 2003 or 2008. This is stated on the part of the spec relating to this amount of RAM that the support O/S edition is enterprise. There is also an option to run it on a 64bit machine, but a cavaet as a full testing cycle hasnt yet been completed on 64bit. There is one difference in the configuration of IIS which support are aware of. You have to use PAE in the O/S and AWE in SQL, and you have to be a little careful in your execution because RAM used in AWE cannot be switched out to the paging file. I wrote the majority of the hardware spec, any specific questions, please do feel free to PM me, or start a spec questionning thread, i'm happy to help @banjo - Thanks for your input as always, it's always nice to see people contributing. cmisadmin.exe will never use any amount of RAM, unless you have it open on the server, as it's run on the clients. I'm not sure if you're a user of our software or you were just making the assumption it ran on the server as a 32bit exe, in which case you'd be spot on. @richh - you make a good point. This isn't the usual service i've experienced myself from support when working in a school, and i'm sure many customers will (and do) testify this isn't usually the case. @7andY - I'm sorry to hear you're having problems. If the issues are performance related i can understand support requesting this. It may be that they are performance related, but not in an obvious way, or maybe there's a communication breakdown somewhere. Please explain your issue, either here in the open where other users may be able to help, or PM me with the details, i'm happy to spend some of my own time talking to you about it. I can atleast add another perspective, and if it isn't performance related i will check it out with the support team. It also seems that the support team didn't explain fully why the 8gb of RAM was necessary and that it would be registered under the correct O/S, i'll make sure that i communicate this to the team to give a better understanding. I hope that the people posting in this thread will see this as a proactive response and that this will reduce some of the frustration. Also, (i realise this wasn't the original intention of the post, or 7andY) please be careful with comments which may be seen to defame a company or the advice provided by a company, in a public forum (regards any company). I understand everyone needs to vent, i do it myself as much as anyone else, but that is what 'behind the red door' is for, where only registered users are permitted. Please try and keep the posts to constructive criticism or helpful advice. There is no room for this kind of conversation in this area of the public forum. I believe this post has cleared up the issues listed (except the original post, which hopefully i will hear about soon) and so i'm happy for it to stay in this section of the forum and not be moved. I cannot and will not speak for my employers, however, who may request it moving or removing if it is seen. Regards Mic Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning My posts are my own and do not represent the views and opinions of my employer or any of my employers associates. 2
Banjo Posted February 18, 2011 Posted February 18, 2011 Hi all, @banjo - Thanks for your input as always, it's always nice to see people contributing. cmisadmin.exe will never use any amount of RAM, unless you have it open on the server, as it's run on the clients. I'm not sure if you're a user of our software or you were just making the assumption it ran on the server as a 32bit exe, in which case you'd be spot on. I was referring to running the Admin.exe on the server being only able to use 4GB of the 8 available. My point was that a single application could only access a maximum of 4GB on 32bit. This leaves 4GB for SQL and 4GB free for the OS. What are the workstation specs? If your workstations are running a shortcut to the server, then the client will run in memory on the workstation and this may be the true bottleneck and not the server.
SkywOrca Posted February 18, 2011 Posted February 18, 2011 The Admin client should never require anywhere near 4GB of ram, unless you're running an extremely complex report, but in any case, the Admin process wouldn't be running on the server unless the Admin application is running there. Admin only ever needs to run on the server during an upgrade in order to ensure that a user with full control access to the database runs the structure validation that updates the database. This still wouldn't have any effect on the Behaviour Management module, since that's an ePortal only module. What could be causing the problem, however, is the tomcat6.exe process, which is the process that vends the ePortal java content. This can easily start to run away with available ram and cause problems and throwing extra ram would at least alleviate this (up until it hits its 4GB limit on 32 bit systems). The best advice I could give if you're having problems with tomcat is to run a script to stop and restart the ePortal services overnight - this is even recommended by Serco (iirc). The other potential bottleneck in ram terms on the server could be sqlservr, but MS SQL is actually pretty good at managing its ram usage these days, so I would firmly recommend that you leave all the memory management options on their default settings. You might be best advised to monitor the actual memory usage figures that you're seeing as users start trying to use the BM module, if you are seeing massive spikes in ram consumption from some of these processes then that could indicate that a solution could be to increase the ram provision, but try running the overnight service restart first. If problems persist, then you could investigate splitting the services up onto separate servers, but I would only go down this route as a last resort as in my experience it causes more problems than it purports to solve. 1
JPS Posted February 18, 2011 Posted February 18, 2011 The best advice I could give if you're having problems with tomcat is to run a script to stop and restart the ePortal services overnight - this is even recommended by Serco (iirc). I ran this script at my last school (had BM) and I do it here (not running BM yet) and I think it helps. It also means I can alter xml files and then know that the restart at 3 in the morning will apply changes and not disrupt users. Serco will often recommend this course of action.
john Posted February 18, 2011 Posted February 18, 2011 I must admit I do agree with the script restarted at stupid o'clock for ePortal, I do that and as others have said its nice to know that changes will be populated in ready for the next day and that it will be all clean, shiny and happy
michael2k6 Posted February 18, 2011 Posted February 18, 2011 Hi all, Thanks for the continued input. Skyw0rca, what you say is correct (all of it). Cheers. John too. Banjo - You're right in what you say - technically, cmisadmin.exe will only use 4gb of RAM as it's a 32bit app, but the point i'm trying to make (as repeated by skyw0rca) is that isn't relevant - the BM module is a bitlet used by ePortal (web app). cmisadmin.exe is the c++ app. As it's running as a shortcut on the client, the app is running on the client not the server (as you suggest). I've seen a few times the workstations (or indeed the network) being the bottleneck with a performance issue with cmisadmin.exe, but in this instance it would not be effected, as we're refering to ePortal. P.S - splitting up the services is ok as another method of resolution, but it becomes difficult to support. You have to be very confident of a high spec network between the servers with the services on and confident with splitting these up (as the upgrade process does not cater for this automatically). Thanks again all Mic @ Serco
pcstru Posted February 28, 2011 Posted February 28, 2011 Is anyone using the Behaviour Managent Module for Facility/CMIS? If you are, can you tell me: Does it work successfully? Are you using the recommended spec server (including 8GB RAM on a 32-bit system...)? Does it slow your system down? We are using it and I believe it's reasonably successful (people are logging stuff). Our server spec is Server 2003 with 4Gb RAM but up to last week it was running with only 2GB. The server however is ONLY running ePortal. I think we did have a problem initially with the display of events on the homepage but this has been fixed (although I understand some schools are still having some issues with that?).
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