Home Forums Discussions Problems AC and database backend

Hello everyone,

I am new to the forum but I have helped my customer service their AC for couples years. I am an IT administrator, and I am in the search for the best implementation of AC.

A little background, my customer has 3-4 docs on AC, with about 25 users/workstations. Our installation of AC is hosted onsite, on the same network with all workstation. Peak time for us is when all 4 docs are present and working on the same server. We witness a huge performance drop when all 4 docs working compares to 1 or 2 docs. We notice it is slow when pulling up a patient profile, between switching tabs and when reading lab results. All tasks have a 2-10sec latency. We have already had multiple AC Support techs remoted in to tweak, change DB permission, clear mailbox, set DB autorestart, etc. None fixes our problem. At last, we suspect it is hardware issue and take AC Support recommendation to upgrade our server. That also didn't work.

I recalled in one phone call I had with a support tech prior to upgrade my customer's server, the guy mentioned about a database upgrade. I learnt that AC by default is running a SQL Express, which limit its service to 1 CPU, 1GB of Memory and 4GB reserved for Reports. SQL Std is the next jump, but it does cost a lot.

Could SQL Express be the culprit that cause the degraded performance that we experience here?
Have anyone successfully gotten any performance gain after upgrade their database to Standard version? I know Standard version has no limitation as listed above.
Or is AC simply not optimized for the large number of user we have?

Any input is appreciated. Thank you.

This short thread may help if you move from an old 32-bit sql express AC version to the new 64-bit sql standard:

http://achelp.amazingcharts.com/ub/ubbthreads.php/topics/72524/Re:_Free_Up_Space

I seem to recall that updates of existing old versions of AC sometimes left the 32-bit sql express in place instead of replacing it.

In any case, posting the version of AC that you're running may help others advise you.

One other thing . . .

When I hear of an abrupt slowdown on AC, I always try to find out if anyone has decided to use the server as a workstation.

We recently upgraded to v10.1.4. Only on it for 2 days so I can not say much. Before that it was on v10.0.2.

Regarding the server as a workstation, it is not the case. We dedicate this server for only one role, which is hosting AC. I can verify that for the entire normal work day, the server would stay chill at below 30% CPU usage and around 6-7GB Memory for the Database.

With 6-7gb ram in use for an AC 10.x database, it sounds like express 64-bit.

But just in case, here's a thread that mentions upgrades leaving 32-bit in place:

http://achelp.amazingcharts.com/ub/ubbthreads.php/topics/71521/Re:_When_will_AC_just_work?#Post71521

The thread also suggests moving up to standard after about 10-12 users.

My AC SQL Express is on 64-bit already. Went in AC the other day to reindex my customer's database (using the option under administrative tools) and it made no difference. I really want hard proof of it will works by upgrade to Std as it is a big expense to my customers. They have already spent a big sum on the hardware and it has returned only minor improvement. I can't believe that there is not another group of our size that experiencing the same thing.

Back when we hosted AC in house on our own server, SQL standard was a requirement for any real working speed.

After that upgrade we quickly hit the other capacities of the server regarding RAM and processor power.

They only solution was to go to the cloud... I wasn't buying another server. This is with 3 providers and 14 workstations.