64 bit OS

[atd]

Friday we upgraded our terminal server to Windows 2008 Server 64bit R2 so we could increase the RAM significantly because we were adding another 10 users and the RAM was previously maxing out from time to time.

Today remote users are reporting extreme slowness using Open Dental - not constantly, but several times throughout the day. Everything on the terminal server looks great - low CPU and RAM usage all day long. I checked bandwidth at all locations and did not see any issues.

The database is still on a 32bit OS (Windows 2003 Server) and we noticed the CPU usage on the MySQL service spike up to 75% at times.

Based on the user manual I expected Open Dental would run fine on 64 bit OS. Is there anything special that should have been done with the install? i.e. a separate installer?
We've spent all day trying to pinpoint the source of the problem with no luck. Anyone have any ideas on what else I could check?

[jordansparks]

So how many client versions of OD are accessing the single database? What are the specs on the computer that's running the database?

[atd]

Today we had 22 users via terminal server and maybe 3 local users.
The server has eight 2GHz Intel Xeon processors and 3GB of RAM.
All processors were spiking on the mysql service at times, but were generally between 30-50% at peak times. The monitoring takes 5 minute snapshots, so it's possible it went higher than that and I just didn't see it max out. The available RAM was consistantly at 1.7GB, so I don't think that's an issue.
We do have other databases on that server, but mysql had the highest CPU usage.
Tomorrow I'm going to watch users closely and monitor the servers and see if I can find any kind of pattern. We're really stumped on this one. We were expecting users to be raving about improved performance after the upgrade Friday, instead we got the opposite response.

[jordansparks]

Eight processors on the MySQL server, right? 22 users is hardly anything.

Do you have Zone Alarm installed? Zone Alarm has been known to cause slowness even if completely turned off (it doesn't really turn off). Anything else that might be scanning the packets?

[atd]

Correct, 8 processors on the database server. No, Zone Alarm is not installed. We don't have anything on that server that would be scanning the database. Working locally I'm seeing the same lag the remote users are seeing - sometimes 15-30 seconds for the appointment screen to come up. So I've eliminated the Terminal Server and internet connections as issues.
Does the database maintenance tool reindex the database? If not, what tools are available to do so and how often should it be done? Can the database maintenance tool be run while users are connected?Users have been hollering all morning about the slowness and I don't blame them. At this point all I can think to do is add another processor (which doesn't seem necessary) or rebuild the database.

[jordansparks]

No no. 8 processors is certainly enough. Usually, when it starts running slow, you just restart the server. How long has it been since you did so?

[atd]

Rebooted last night.

[jordansparks]

What version of Open Dental are you using?

[atd]

Version 6.9.37
Ran the database maintenance tool over lunch. Nothing of consequence reported that I can see.

[jordansparks]

Might be time to run "optimize table". This can be done on all the tables at once using mysqlcheck.exe. But it would take be a while to explain how to start a shell and get to the point where you can run mysqlcheck. We could build it into the dbmaint tool instead. When you run optimize tables, it will destroy performance while it's running. It will probably take around 10 minutes to run. The syntax would be:
mysqlcheck opendental -u root -p
if you have a password that's not blank, it would be:
mysqlcheck opendental -u root -psecret
(no space after p)
Full documentation of this tool is here:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/ ... check_user
I'm going to put a note in your account so that if you call about this question, you can talk to someone who can help you run the tool.

[atd]

I ran the Maintenance->Optimize tool from MySQL Admin. That did it! Open Dental is faster than it's ever been (since our data conversion) and the CPU's are now running well below 20%. If anyone else is suffering from performance issues, I'd highly recommend optimizing the database.
Happy users makes my job much more pleasant.

[jordansparks]

Oh good! I was just getting ready to write up an entire page in the manual listing all possible sources of slowness. So you didn't have to use a shell like I was talking about? You just did it through MySQL admin? That's wonderful. I'll have to document that in the manual.

[atd]

Correct. In MySQL Administrator I clicked on Catalogs, then selected opendental from the list, then clicked the Maintenance button. Chose the Optimize Tables task, clicked Next, and it did the rest.

[doctorjoe]

How does a user open up mysql administrator...is that a 3rd party program that I need to install, something found within opendental.....?

[jordansparks]

It's posted as a download on our website
http://www.opendental.com/manual/troubl ... wness.html
and is also available from MySQL.