Why is Goldmine so sluggish?
December 12, 2011 6:46 AM   Subscribe

Help, SQL connectivity issues are driving me batty!

We use VOIP at the (very small, there's just three of us here) office and recently switched to a new router from the D-Link cheapie because the old one couldn't really handle the upstream.

We've got four boxes here, three Vista and one 7. I am trying to convince the bossman that Vista is a piece of crap, and I'm making progress, but things are a little disorganized at the moment to make the transition smooth.

Now, we use FrontRange Goldmine Premium Edition 9 as mail/contacts/QB-integration program. It runs off of a SQL server that runs on a Vista box. The Goldmine instances get all their data -- inbox, archive, everything -- off the SQL server.

So, ever since we switched the router, things have been sluggish as hell. We've tried everything: disabling all firewalls, DMZing, opening any and all ports, and plenty of other redundant things. Nothing is helping. Goldmine is slow as as hell and tends to crash if I ever try to make a new contact and send an email with an attachment.

Running the program off the computer with the SQL server on it, however, is fine, so I've narrowed the problem down to the connectivity. We've tried to different new routers, and even putting the old one back on, but it's still broken. So, help? Ideas? Anything?
posted by griphus to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)
Could be slow DNS lookups?
posted by pharm at 6:47 AM on December 12, 2011

Are you using SQL authentication or Active Directory authentication for connecting to the sql server instance? (ie, do you connect up using a username and password, or does it "just work" when you use your login account)? The problem could be slow authentication, not a slow connection.

Do things get faster if you edit C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on the client machine and add an entry for the SQL server? (this would indicate that pharm was correct about the lookup times. Also, this is not a solution; remove the entry even if it works and come back to diagnose why DNS is sucking)

Are you able to provide a network trace of what you're seeing? Or a sysinternals process monitor capture of what's going on?
posted by bfranklin at 7:07 AM on December 12, 2011

Goldmine requires a username/pass to get in. The server itself, until now, has been completely hands-off. Boots up with the PC, and everything connects in on its own. You wouldn't know it was there if you didn't know any better.

Also, I'm not sure how to add the SQL server to hosts. And check your MeMail re: trace.
posted by griphus at 7:23 AM on December 12, 2011

Perhaps an IP conflict? You could flip your machines to a static ip, outside your DHCP range to ensure you're not getting any conflicts from other network devices you may not have considered (voip box, printer, iphones, blackberrys, etc.)

Ping the server-- do you get a good response time (<1>
Continually ping the server (ping SERVER -t) do you get drop outs of non-responsiveness?

Do a large multi-gigabyte file transfer from client to server, a big movie, etc, does it go quickly (8MB/s or higher)?

View the processes tab, within task manager on the server-- is anything taking up a decent amount of CPU usage (a steady 25, 50 or 100, depending on your processor) on the server?
posted by Static Vagabond at 7:40 AM on December 12, 2011

It sounds like you're using the DLink as both a router and a switch (i.e., your internet goes through it, but all your computers also plug into it and talk to each other that way).

I'd suggest splitting this function out by getting a dedicated gigabit switch (just a switch, not a switch/router combination). Plug all your computers into the switch, then plug one cable from the switch into the DLink router.

In that scenario when your computers talk to eachother the DLink won't be involved at all.
posted by odinsdream at 7:42 AM on December 12, 2011

Well, we already had a switch to distribute the 5 VOIP lines, so I plugged everything into there. Things got a little faster, so then we dropped the Windows Firewall on both ends, rebooted the server, and things seem to be working.

So, this seems to have turned into a case of "it works, but I don't know why."
posted by griphus at 8:20 AM on December 12, 2011

Hard to say without knowing even the model of the router.
posted by rhizome at 11:02 AM on December 12, 2011

It's a NetGear N600, but the problem seems to be independent of the router; we've tried three different routers.
posted by griphus at 11:08 AM on December 12, 2011

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