Hi all,

We are running OnTime v7.1  on a box with a P4 3.2Ghz CPU, 1 gig of RAM and 3 x 160 gig 7200 rpm SATA hard drives with RAID 5. I know that 1 gig of RAM is listed as the recommended amount and we meet that so I would expect it to be running okay.

We have configured OnTime to use the Features tab to manage all of our work so Defects, Features, Tasks and Incidents are defined by a custom field. We only currently have around 600 items in the Feature table but find the performance very slow. I haven't upgraded to 7.1.1 as the forum release post did not mention a performance upgrade in that release. We mainly use the Windows client direct to SQL Server but some users use Web.

 I work at another company which has OnTime running on a stronger server. 6 gig of RAM with RAIDed 10,000 rpm drives. The performance there is excellent. So I don't think issue is related to OnTime itself but more related to our config/server/environment.

What else could be affecting performance? My bosses have checked the CPU and RAM usage on the server and it is not using all of the available resources. I would love for them to simply upgrade the server and that to solve the issue but I need to show that we have checked out all the possibilities before they upgrade the machine.

Does anyone else have any experience running OnTime on a lower spec machine?

How good is performance?

Any help or pointers that anyone could provide would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Chris 

The other possible cause to slow performance could be related to a possible bottle neck on the local network where the SQL database is hosted at. Can you tell me if the SQL server is hosting multiple databases by any chance? Are there any other applications that are experiencing the same or similar performance problem by any chance?

In the 7.1.0 build of OnTime, we have made a lot of performance increases especially when using the OnTime 2007 Remote Server to establish a successful connection to the database when working with the OnTime 2007 windows client. If you have the necessary remote server licenses in your OnTime product key, then you should be able to use the remote server connection method instead of the direct SQL connection to the database. The OnTime Remote Server which will transfer a lot less data across the local network thus increasing the performance when using the windows client.

Thank you, 

Thanks for your response Dragan.

The SQL Server is hosting multiple databases, however, the load on those databases is small. There are no performance issues with the other applications.

I will try using Remote Server and then get back to you. 

Hi Chris,

 The specs on our host box, Web and CP, are actually quite low. Its a VMware guest. It has 1 processor allocated, Opteron, and 1 GB of RAM.

The database server is a Dual Xeon 3200 with 4 gig's of RAM though and ours runs well. We actually run 2 instances of OT on it and it runs great.

 So it definitely seems to be a database server issue. Dragan knows his stuff, he knows our issues well. 

Thanks for your response Tim. Our database server and web server is the same box.

Dragan - We set up remote server and only had one user connected via RS and the perfomance was no different to having 10 users directly connected to SQL Server. Any thoughts?

I found the article below and am going to get someone to setup perfmon to see if it appears to be a hardware issue. 

http://www.sql-server-performance.com/sql_server_performance_audit2.asp

Cheers,
 

Chris

It might seem obvious, but how well does the system perform on a different stand--alone workstation?

Also, if you have the web server setup and on the same server and it is still slow, then the problem is not the network. 

Hi JP,

I'm sure it's just the low spec server. And upgrading a server can't hurt.

Cheers,

Chris