JDE Archiving odd question

[JMast]

Jeff,

You are correct that "spend more money" doesn't happen easily around here. Even though it doesn't seem like it from this thread, this is a very well run financially conservative company growing and gaining market share in a down economy.

Regarding license fees not part of the IT budget, where should they be? Even so, 50k every year strictly for Oracle maintenance for JDE is a huge chunk for a small company. For example, we could probably buy both a good forecasting package and a BI solution for that amount. We certainly could buy an archiving tool for that. Not to mention putting into servers and SANs!

As far as the system running out of space, that won't happen for quite some time. I think we have around 700 GB free on the data partition.

This brings me back to the topic of this post which was looking down the road at archiving for user perceived performance and maintenance. I have greatly appreciated all of your input even on the side trips.

I have briefly mentioned Colin's idea of SQL 2008 compression to my manager and he is definitely interested. I plan to show him this entire thread at some point so he sees all of your insights.

Jer

 

[Domcal22]

We are looking at the Optum product for Archiving and I was wondering how long ago you tried the archiving with Optum. As well if you would be willing to let me know what Optum's respons was to the issue I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,

 

[gregglarkin]

David

That was about two years ago. Hopefully the scripts have improved since then. The tool was fine, the scripts provided were not up to the task.

- Gregg

 

[brother_of_karamazov]

[ QUOTE ]
Jeff,

You are correct that "spend more money" doesn't happen easily around here. Even though it doesn't seem like it from this thread, this is a very well run financially conservative company growing and gaining market share in a down economy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Probably a good philosophy.

[ QUOTE ]

Regarding license fees not part of the IT budget, where should they be?

[/ QUOTE ]

In a cost center other than the one for technology. My point is that I do not feel that licensing fees for a business system should be assigned to a technology department. Some argument could be made to assign technology licensing (RDBMS, OS, Network) to IT but the recurring costs of running the business should be split among the end user departments. Just my two cents worth.

[ QUOTE ]

As far as the system running out of space, that won't happen for quite some time. I think we have around 700 GB free on the data partition.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heck, didn't know you had 700GB free. Still, my calculations say that you are probably going to be in trouble in a couple of years based on the assumptions that 1) your rate of growth is going to increase, and 2) you really don't have 700GB free, you have ~500GB free before things start degrading due to lack of free space and a decreased ability to defrag.


[ QUOTE ]

This brings me back to the topic of this post which was looking down the road at archiving for user perceived performance and maintenance. I have greatly appreciated all of your input even on the side trips.

[/ QUOTE ]

We did get sidetracked didn't we? I have worked with Arctools and have seen good results with that. You would still need to store that data somewhere so maybe another database server without the high performance requirements of your production system but with lots of space.

[ QUOTE ]

I have briefly mentioned Colin's idea of SQL 2008 compression

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey, that was my idea. Colin has his fair share of really helpful ideas without needing to get credit for mine.

Jer

 

[JMast]

Jeff,

mea culpa. Out of respect for people's time, I try to respond quickly when I post (also keeps the conversation going) and I tried to cram some responses in during that rush project I had to work on, so I didn't go back and check references on my sources! I am glad you stood up for yourself

Interesting idea on spreading fees across business centers, not sure how that would fly here.

[ QUOTE ]
Heck, didn't know you had 700GB free.

[/ QUOTE ]

You and Gregg are still correct in pointing out the concerns and issues we could come across.

To quote my manager: "Anything is possible with unlimited time and resources!" -- usually the reply to those extreme requests from users.

Now, if only I had Gregg's resources.....actually, just a small timeshare partition on the Exadata would work. He probably wouldn't even know we were there!

Jer

 

[brother_of_karamazov]

[ QUOTE ]
Jeff,

mea culpa. Out of respect for people's time, I try to respond quickly when I post (also keeps the conversation going) and I tried to cram some responses in during that rush project I had to work on, so I didn't go back and check references on my sources! I am glad you stood up for yourself

[/ QUOTE ]

Hahaha, I really don't give a hoot who gets the (dubious) credit....just being funny.

[ QUOTE ]

Interesting idea on spreading fees across business centers, not sure how that would fly here.

[/ QUOTE ]

It changes the attitudes about who is responsible for the system costs. Similar to my thoughts that IT should not lead an E1 implementation project. The technology supports the business but the business drives.....or should.

[ QUOTE ]
Heck, didn't know you had 700GB free.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]

You and Gregg are still correct in pointing out the concerns and issues we could come across.

To quote my manager: "Anything is possible with unlimited time and resources!" -- usually the reply to those extreme requests from users.

Now, if only I had Gregg's resources.....actually, just a small timeshare partition on the Exadata would work. He probably wouldn't even know we were there!

[/ QUOTE ]

The good thing is that you are being proactive and realistic about what the future holds for your system. I love, love, love seeing that.

 

[gregglarkin]

Jer

Jeff is on the money with the cost thingie. That is how we allocate JDE. Some of the IT budget is allocated under corporate IT, but the baseline cost of JDE is allocated back to the businesses that use it. Project costs are capitalized, but funded by and approved by the businesses that requested them. It makes for an interesting game of IT "selling it's services" back to the business. That is a big activity played up at the senior manager and director level. (Praxair is a fortune 500 with more senior managers than you can shake a stick at).

Exadata - sorry, not going to share my new sandbox. Mine mine mine! Out of the starting gate, it's going to be sitting pretty idle, but they have huge plans for the exadata, moving four other instances of JDE on to it, plus hosting Oracle databases for Oracle E-business and Hyperion. It's a big sandbox and eventually there will be lots of Praxair kiddies playing in the sand.

- Gregg

 

[Larry_Jones]

Jer,

I must be missing something here.

At a current expansion rate of 400MB a day (aside - how did u calculate that?) you're burning .4 GB a day. By that number and allowing for business growth you could burn through your free disk space in 200 days . . .?

Are you with the biotech (I think) company that presented this last collaborate on a customized order fulfullment process that could take an order, build and ship within a 24 hour period - and there were thousands of these each day?

 

[JMast]

Larry,

The number comes from the size of the full backup. As I said earlier, we get 3+ GB back every month from optimization and another GB or so from purging Ledger, so the true growth is around 4 or 5 GB per month. As I said earlier, we should be good on pure disk space for the data partition. It is the increased maintenance (longer backups...) and performance degradation I am anticipating.

No, we are not that company. We just have in the neighborhood of 14,000 customers, many of whom order when they need something not "once a month". We also do a lot of contract work for custom products. The result is many lines are 1 item and our items are generally not very expensive, so the "sales per line" is not large. We do ship in 24 hours.

Jer

 

[brother_of_karamazov]

[ QUOTE ]
Larry,

The number comes from the size of the full backup. As I said earlier, we get 3+ GB back every month from optimization and another GB or so from purging Ledger, so the true growth is around 4 or 5 GB per month. As I said earlier, we should be good on pure disk space for the data partition. It is the increased maintenance (longer backups...) and performance degradation I am anticipating.

No, we are not that company. We just have in the neighborhood of 14,000 customers, many of whom order when they need something not "once a month". We also do a lot of contract work for custom products. The result is many lines are 1 item and our items are generally not very expensive, so the "sales per line" is not large. We do ship in 24 hours.

Jer

[/ QUOTE ]

Quest's LiteSpeed will give you incredible compression of backups (~%90 is possible). The compression level is tunable so you can balance size vs. CPU use. It even has a scenario tester that lets you dial in the best combination.

 

[JMast]

[ QUOTE ]
It's a big sandbox and eventually there will be lots of Praxair kiddies playing in the sand.


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't envy you the babysitting part of that situation.

[ QUOTE ]
baseline cost of JDE is allocated back to the businesses that use it

[/ QUOTE ]

This company is maturing and growing, so it is possible we get to that point. The first place we need to do it is with JDE client licenses requests.

 

[JMast]

I haven't heard of LiteSpeed. Do you plug that into the SQL Server backup process somehow or is it an "after backup" process. I will check that out, thanks for the tip.

 

[brother_of_karamazov]

[ QUOTE ]
I haven't heard of LiteSpeed. Do you plug that into the SQL Server backup process somehow or is it an "after backup" process. I will check that out, thanks for the tip.

[/ QUOTE ]

The cost/benefit is pretty compelling. Keep in mind though that SQL 2008 has backup compression:

"Backup compression was introduced in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise. Beginning in SQL Server 2008 R2, backup compression is supported by SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard and all higher editions. Every edition of SQL Server 2008 and later can restore a compressed backup."

LiteSpeed is still a better product....in my opinion.

 

[JMast]

Jeff,

You are quick on the replies today. I did a little research and wanted to change my idiot post. Of course, it is a third party product in place of SQL Server backups. I don't know what I was thinking.

I understand that SQL 2008 has compression, but I am glad you mentioned LiteSpeed. It may be worth it if we decide to wait a year or two for new hardware before moving to 2008.

Perfect example of why this thread (and the List in general) is so helpful.

 

[gregglarkin]

[ QUOTE ]
Quest's LiteSpeed will give you incredible compression of backups (~%90 is possible). The compression level is tunable so you can balance size vs. CPU use. It even has a scenario tester that lets you dial in the best combination.

[/ QUOTE ]

We use litespeed - one thing to look out for. It leaks memory. You will need to reboot your sql server once a month or it will get cranky. I went six weeks between reboots once, and the server started to get very cranky. After it was rebooted, it was fast and happy again.

Could be windows, could be SQL, probably is litespeed (that's my DBAs main suspect).

Small enough price to pay......

 

[gregglarkin]

[ QUOTE ]
It's a big sandbox and eventually there will be lots of Praxair kiddies playing in the sand.


I don't envy you the babysitting part of that situation.



[/ QUOTE ]

Well I get to learn a bunch of new stuff out of the deal. I get to play with 9.0. Linux. Oracle Database. And Sun hardware. Lots of new toys to play with. Make me that much more valued. It's part of my plan to stay recession proof.....

- Gregg

 

[brother_of_karamazov]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Quest's LiteSpeed will give you incredible compression of backups (~%90 is possible). The compression level is tunable so you can balance size vs. CPU use. It even has a scenario tester that lets you dial in the best combination.

[/ QUOTE ]

We use litespeed - one thing to look out for. It leaks memory. You will need to reboot your sql server once a month or it will get cranky. I went six weeks between reboots once, and the server started to get very cranky. After it was rebooted, it was fast and happy again.

Could be windows, could be SQL, probably is litespeed (that's my DBAs main suspect).

Small enough price to pay......

[/ QUOTE ]

LiteSpeed does indeed make use of the MemToLeave area of SQL Server memory. It needs contiguous memory so when setting max memory for SQL Server this has to be accounted for. Just needs to be setup properly.

 

[LChadefaux]

Hi ,

Are you in US or Europe?

Did you talk to the Arctools guys to check pricing? I had pre-conceived ideas on the subject and archiving/ purging projects are not that expensive and you are sure not to damage your integrity.

Regards,

Laurent