Vince,

My response won't be so much related to running Sage 300 CRE in a Virtual Environment as it is to performance in general - especially since reviewing the responses you've had so far don't seem to offer a lot of hope.

There are a number of issues that can slow the overall performance of Sage 300 CRE and I hope you have also addressed these (in order of impact):

• Size of your Log Viewer file.  Sage confirms this is an issue when it reaches 2GB (when it iterates itself), but I find it has a large impact on performance between 1.5 and 2GB.  To check the size of this file, browse to the Timberline Office folder/share on your server then to 9.5\Accounting\Global\PVData\Master_QLM and look at the size of the QLM_R1.mkd file (or see if it has already been iterated).  This file can cause slowness across the board in Sage.  It can be archived from within Sage while looking at your Log Viewer.
• Large datasets in your current/active files.  e.g. 10 years worth of payroll checks in current.prt.  The amount of historical data should vary from application to application, but I recommend archiving as much as possible where possible.  This greatly impacts performance of reports, but also impacts time to open a Task window or process tasks (e.g. Enter Invoices, Enter Direct Costs, etc.).  I've seen a report go from over 3 hours to 30 seconds after archiving 10 years of data.  I've also seen a Task window take 30-60 seconds to open, but open instantly after archiving data.
• Security tables.  This might take more discussion, but to try to simplify - if you have an Employee assigned to more than one Role, no two or more Roles should provide access to the same object (Task, Report, Inquiry, etc.).  If you have an Employee assigned to the Application Administrator Role, they should not be assigned to any other Role (with the exception of the Security Administrator Role - if applicable).  It is better to create more Roles to reduce overlap of assignments than to generalize the Roles and provide multiple assignments to the same object.
• Reports Manager organization.  The previous three items will impact overall performance while this one would initially only impact report performance/access, but if left unmanaged could corrupt all of Security.  Within each application, access your Report Manager and be sure to Arrange your reports by Sub-menu.  There is more maintenance that can be performed here, but this one item is/could be the most critical.  I've seen mismanaged Reports Managers that started as corruption in access to reports in that application get to the point, it corrupted Security in general requiring either restoring Security and Reports Manager files from a backup prior to the corruption (very difficult to determine) or creating new Security and User menu files from scratch.

I commonly find these issues in the environments I've worked in and hope this helps resolve some of your performance pains.

Todd Baker
Sage Consultant

Vince,

My response won't be so much related to running Sage 300 CRE in a Virtual Environment as it is to performance in general - especially since reviewing the responses you've had so far don't seem to offer a lot of hope.

There are a number of issues that can slow the overall performance of Sage 300 CRE and I hope you have also addressed these (in order of impact):

• Size of your Log Viewer file.  Sage confirms this is an issue when it reaches 2GB (when it iterates itself), but I find it has a large impact on performance between 1.5 and 2GB.  To check the size of this file, browse to the Timberline Office folder/share on your server then to 9.5\Accounting\Global\PVData\Master_QLM and look at the size of the QLM_R1.mkd file (or see if it has already been iterated).  This file can cause slowness across the board in Sage.  It can be archived from within Sage while looking at your Log Viewer.
• Large datasets in your current/active files.  e.g. 10 years worth of payroll checks in current.prt.  The amount of historical data should vary from application to application, but I recommend archiving as much as possible where possible.  This greatly impacts performance of reports, but also impacts time to open a Task window or process tasks (e.g. Enter Invoices, Enter Direct Costs, etc.).  I've seen a report go from over 3 hours to 30 seconds after archiving 10 years of data.  I've also seen a Task window take 30-60 seconds to open, but open instantly after archiving data.
• Security tables.  This might take more discussion, but to try to simplify - if you have an Employee assigned to more than one Role, no two or more Roles should provide access to the same object (Task, Report, Inquiry, etc.).  If you have an Employee assigned to the Application Administrator Role, they should not be assigned to any other Role (with the exception of the Security Administrator Role - if applicable).  It is better to create more Roles to reduce overlap of assignments than to generalize the Roles and provide multiple assignments to the same object.
• Reports Manager organization.  The previous three items will impact overall performance while this one would initially only impact report performance/access, but if left unmanaged could corrupt all of Security.  Within each application, access your Report Manager and be sure to Arrange your reports by Sub-menu.  There is more maintenance that can be performed here, but this one item is/could be the most critical.  I've seen mismanaged Reports Managers that started as corruption in access to reports in that application get to the point, it corrupted Security in general requiring either restoring Security and Reports Manager files from a backup prior to the corruption (very difficult to determine) or creating new Security and User menu files from scratch.

I commonly find these issues in the environments I've worked in and hope this helps resolve some of your performance pains.

Todd Baker
Sage Consultant