NorthernSands

I've now run into a problem since the Spring update (or the server migration); Some / All our double lessons are now treated as Singles in Lesson Monitor. Ho hum. There are about three patches and a promise to fix it in the Summer update. I'll see what Capita have to say...

I believe that there are filesets needed for PLASC etc that come down with SOLUS and not part of the update ISO. I'm with @vikpaw on this one, update the test system using the ISO and then use SOLUS for the live system.

It's an HP SAN rack with 7200RPM SAS drives. Currently there's only one SQL instance running, with two DBs (SIMS and Discover). Soon there will be a second school (again with SIMS and Discover) in a second instance. When we roll out SOLUS3 it might have to go in a third instance (as it will need to feed both schools).

Hi all, Does anyone know of a way to get special characters from an Aspect into an Individual Report? The Lower School report will be going into SIMS for the first time and their old one had stars for certain things, not numbers (ie 5 stars, 4 stars etc). They also used the Square Root symbol as a 'tick' (Ugh!). Wingdings has what I'm after but no matter what I try I can't get the Wingdings font to be used. I tried copying from Character Map and pasting into the Grade Descriptions. No go: on the report it either gives that character in Ariel (or whatever) and if I change the font of the whole tag to Wingdings (and get a bunch of weird characters in the template) it fails to recognise the tag when generated. I've even tried doing an If Then Else in AM to add the stars to a comment field, but it just replaces the text with questions marks. I thought I'd have a poke in the macros to see if I could change the font after it had switched tag for data, but they're all password protected. Anyone got any idea before I resort to either Asterisks or telling the Lower School that it can't be done? Many thanks!

I count vouch for Serco products, but I can answer your concern re. SQL in a VM. We run SIMS in a VM, using MSSQL 2008 R2 on Windows 2008 R2. The VM backend is 4 servers giving 16 CPU Cores and 192GB RAM (I think). The storage runs on a SAN with 18 spindles. The SIMS VM has 8GB RAM and just 2 CPU cores at the moment. Despite a minor CPU shortage at registration time, the set-up runs very well indeed. What I will say is, before we installed the SAN, the entire school was trying to run from a 5 spindle RAID5 array. SIMS would quite often appear to grind to a halt.

Just had a minor problem with Discover today. I downed the SIMS box yesterday to add a couple of extra Gigs of RAM to the VM. Came to run the Discover Sync from a workstation today and it hung on 'Waiting for service' (or whatever). Checked the SIMSDiscoverDataTransferService and it hadn't started (although it had been set to Automatic). Started the service and all is now well...

Googling the original error suggests that it's related to a 32Bit process failing to run on the 64Bit OS. When the new server had SIMS installed, did you use the SIMSInst.EXE that was part of your original setups folder from the 2K3 box, or did you install from the latest install CD / ISO? I don't know if this is the cause of the problem, or if it'll fix it, but it comes to mind that the SIMSInst.EXE could be _very_ old. For some reason this file doesn't get updated when running SOLUS. You could try installing from a fresh setups folder or CD / ISO.

@glennda and @Cache: Thanks for those scripts. I'll be working with the network manager to update the SIMS.ini. We'll have a look at these and see what we make of them!

That's quite an achievement! Well done

The Connect.ini I posted is for the SIMS DB. For FMS, @Theblacksheep is correct; the best way I've found with FMS is to use FDS and setup two or more shortcuts as required. EDIT: Here's a link to the post with the connect.ini: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/73944-running-addional-sims-net-database-testing.html#post659441

Ours updated fine. We did a server migration at the same time so the only problems we had were the machines that had hard coded Connect.ini and / or mapped drives. Having said that, we actually left the SIMS.ini pointing to the old server so the workstations updated from that, but the S: drive and Connect.ini referred to the new one (if they were pointing correctly). I'm thinking (hoping) we'll have SOLUS3 in place before we need to do another update, so we can use that to do the update (would that then update the SIMS.ini?).

Just to confirm: Did you change the location of the DocStorage server in SIMS (via Tools > Setups > Document Management Server)? Did you copy the DocStorage contents over to the new server? I tend to run SIMS and import the latest reports before copying DocStorage, this way the required folder structure is set up for you. You must do point 1) beforehand. Oh, and welcome to the forum.

Duly voted for. I see that it's "published for consultation". I find I have to use the procedure every time, tags like form tutor seem to fail pretty much every time I don't verify the template (so it can't be just checking syntax, can it?). I have other problems with it: I have a template that's got too many tags for it to check, and the procedure dies before the end. I run two screen and generally have the result selection window on the other screen when I'm adding tags. If I forget, and leave the selection window open when I choose to verify, I get an error and the document disappears! Grrr...

Welcome! The training databases are too big to e-mail, and I'm not entirely sure Capita would want someone to host them outside of SupportNet. Your best bet is to ask your SIMS Support team (be that Capita or your LA). Either that, or take a copy of your existing SIMS DB and install it on a standalone system. The easiest way to do this, I find, is to take a copy of the entire SIMS folder from the server, copy it to a standalone system, then run SIMSInst.EXE. Either attach a previously copied .MDF & .LDF as you go through the install (don't copy the DB files without having detached them from the live server!), or choose to attach a DB later and restore from a .BAK (which you can obtain from the live SIMS 'on the fly' from within System Manager). Oh, and don't forget a copy of your DocStorage folder! Come back if you want more detailed instructions or further help.

@steveg: It looks like I might be running two SIMS DBs on one server (two instances, but no FMS). The only question mark I have at the moment is SOLUS3. I've not looked into it fully yet, though.

Sorry to raise an old thread, but I thought it'd better here than starting a new one. I'm probably going to look at implementing SOLUS3 in the Summer, but our installation might not be that straight forward. Between then and now I may well be setting up a new school / SIMS DB, in a new instance, on our SIMS box. I've had a scan through the SOLUS3 docs and it talks about either an LA deployment with several schools, or in a school with one DB. Anyone out there installed it on one Server with two instances each with it's own SIMS DB (and Discover DB)? I fear this one's going to be a head-scratcher for me.

We're not using SOLUS3 just yet (I have a potential new 'school' to add to our existing SIMS box and that may well have a bearing). I have, though, installed Discover on the server and my workstation. Seeing as we're not a UK State school, there are no pre-setup assessment charts. Looks like I'll have to RTFM, and I'm not rolling it out until I've done that! Still, despite some annoying quirks, it's looking good.

I find it interesting that Vista is to lose it's support before XP. Nice to see 64Bit Office 2010 support from this Summer.

Like VikPaw, I have just done a clean install from the Spring 2010 Install ISO, then the Spring 2011 Upgrade ISO. This, too, is on a new VM with Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2. Absolutely flawless.

@TechMonkey - New hardware may not be the solution. I know a school that had a load of bad packets flying around the network and slowed everything down and would freeze the switches eventually. Instead of finding out exactly what the problem was, they replaced hardware to make it all faster. All it did was freeze the switches even quicker! Post a new thread, if you like, and we can all offer advice about where to go (if it's your bag).

@RichSpriggs - I believe the OP is referring to Individual Reports from [Focus > Assessment > Individual Report], rather than reports run from [Reports > Run Reports]. However, useful stuff for when those reports aren't running well.

That's an interesting point, Vik, re. putting the Discover DB on a different server. I guess it could even run on SQL Express?! Having gone through the installation for the beta, I see no reason why that couldn't be the case. As far as I can tell, Discover communicates with SIMS through local user accounts that are 'trusted' in SIMS, much like GroupCall etc do.

Glad you got it working, Vik! I don't think I would have thought about looking at the firewall. Has it changed in R2?

Yeah, I know going from the the 2010 Spring Clean CD (nice one!) will give me the same result, but with all the changes they've made recently (.NET 4, Windows 2K8 R2 / SQL 2K8 R2 support etc) I just like a clean slate.

@vikpaw That's the update CD, not the install CD (which is what I'm waiting for). Janet A isn't around until tomorrow, so I'll hopefully found out the planned release date. I'll then be able to decide whether to wait, or start from Spring 2010. Regarding your, er, interesting problem, the only thing I can think off is the dns suffix search order; is the Domain's domain name in the list on the server? I've just had so many weird problems caused by that. You could also try ignoring the shared drive and used IP address based UNC paths instead.