Hi, Greetings! We have 3 sites in our country where Axapta is being used. Right now, the scenario is each site have a separate database and separate App. I strongly believe that there should be one database hosting 3 companies instead of 3 separate databases for 3 companies. This has been setup and running since last 3 years so each site has around 30-35 GB of data. I was thining if i try and consolidate it to 1 database hosting 3 companies, then how would the performance be? e.g. site A is at one end of the country and Site B is at other end of the country say if database is common so site B accessing the database remotely will slow down the performance? In SQL server 2000 we have something called federated servers(using distributed partitioned views) sort of clustering wherein we can have database running on distributed servers sort of cluster. But how far is it compatible with Axapta or has anyone tried doing something keeping Axapta in the mind? Any experiences/suggestions welcome. Thanks for your time. Regards, Dilip
Hi Dilip, Hope you are keeping well [:)] The scenario that you outlined is fairly common across Axapta - ie a company has 2-3 or more branch offices/companies spread across the country. If the network is stable and fast enough, you can have single database/application servers physically in one company and rest of them can connect to these using Citrix/Terminal server setup. In fact the company that I work for have got offices spread across UK and there is just one single server set (Application/AOS/SQL Server) and so far so good (touch wood !!) Coming to federated servers (fs), this is typically used to balance the processing load across multiple SQL servers. Assuming my understanding of “fs” is correct, this concept is diagonally opposite to what you want to achieve - ie., you want to amalgamate different SQL Servers into one single entity where as “fs” is all about balancing the processing load across multiple SQL servers. Warm regards, Harish Mohanbabu
Hi Harish, Thanks for your inputs. I’m doing well and hope you are fine too. Initially, I would be consolidating all the 3 sites data into 1 database, but eventually my goal would be to have load balancing because 1 database server handling so much data and we have concurrent connections i.e. around 150 users requesting at the same time. So, I was thinking on the lines of federated servers for load balancing for the single database which I will create. In this case, as per what I read in BOL (SQL Server Books Online), it says that you can do this by distributed partitioned views, this is easy if we have a small application that we have built because we know in and out of the system. But in case of Axapta, it’s huge ERP application hosting 1,300+ tables. So creating distributed partitioned views and segregating them on to multiple servers for load-balancing would be a tough nut to crack…Do you or any others have done something this sort of? Would like you guys to share your experiences in case of how to distribute database load in case of huge concurrent access?? Thanks in advance. Good day Regards, Dilip
Hi Dilip, Here are my .02 cents - Provided you have the right network infrastructure, you should be able to go ahead with your first plan i.e., single database for 3 companies. 150 users is not too much. The only problem that I can think of would be in case if you want to merge DIS layers. But this again depends on the countries that you want to merge. Regards, Harish Mohanbabu
Harish, My director for time being have postponed the plan of merging into one database becoz merging/migrating 3 yrs data of 3 companies hosting 3 databases into a single database is really a herculean task according to her! Coming to dis layers, since the 3 locations are in the same country i don’t think whether this will effect in the migration process. Thanks and have a good day Regards, Dilip