Sage 50 networking advice - The Book-keepers Forum (UK)

angyhobbit · Newbie

Our office is running sage line 50 v19, accessed by 5 users. Lately we notice that access to sage is painfully slow. I'm not sure if it's been getting progressively worse, or just we can't tolerate it anymore (we've got 4 people using it for input & output pretty constantly for 8 hours a day)! So I'm looking at the hardware and network setup to try and improve things, and I could do with some advice.

The sage 'server' has ok hardware by desktop standards (2.3ghz dual core processor a couple of years old, 3gb ram, 7200rpm hard drive), and is running windows xp (I'm not sure why xp is on there!). Client machines are running a mix of windows os from xp to win 7.

Networking is done by sharing the ACCDATA folder on the network, with all pcs on the same workgroup. I believe that's the approved method. Connection wise, everything is connected to a main network switch (or, in some cases, indirectly through another switch) which then goes to a router. The switch is not a smart switch.

The speed issue only seems to be when connecting over the network. When running reports or transactions directly on the server machine it's nice and fast. So you'd think it was a network issue, rather than a data access or processing issue. However when I connected another pc directly to the sage pc to create an ad-hoc network, disabling all firewalls and antivirus on both machines, the speed issue is there again. Both pcs have gigabit ports. Given that the connection was direct, I'm not sure what other network changes I could do to speed it up, so I'm a bit stumped now.

I'm sure it's advisable to connect everything directly to a main switch, rather than via an intermediate switch. Might this help? I'm running into a passive switch into a router, or would I be better with an active switch?

I've been talking to some companies about getting a better server machine. One company has quoted me about £5k for a machine with the following spec:
HP ProLiant ML350E Gen8 with 2 quad core 2.4 GHz processors, 32GB ram, 4 x Gigabit Ethernet, 15000 rpm hard drive

Is this spec a bit overkill for running sage across 5 users?

Another company quoted a much more manageable price for this:
HP ProLiant ML350p Gen8 , 16GB ram, 4 x Gigabit Ethernet, 10000 rpm hard drive

Is this sufficient?

Is there anything else we can try, like data consolidation or something?

Sorry about the long post, but any ideas or suggestions?

BruceDenney · Senior Member

Serious overkill. Sage only needs a file server, yuo can get away with anything to do that, it is netkorking that you need to focus on.

Merlion ABS · Senior Member

Sage doesn't need a powerful server as Brucie has mentioned. but what it does need if fat 1GB Ethernet network cards on both the server, router (or switch)and PC's to kick the data around and a minimum 4gb Ram on the PC's to ensure smooth running

the more users, the more it will slow down. but there is no need to go and spend that sort of money on a server. I would definitely get some more quotes for lower specs though. a client of mine spend 3k on a nice Dell Server but we dont run sage on it anyway, but still allows 15 uses to use the network without any issues.