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ecpsys
Welcome Newcomer
USA
14 Posts
Status: offline |
 Posted - 06/15/2012 : 2:37:15 PM
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I have a small customer that has 7 users on a single server running Server 2003 x64. It was running all AD functions, shares, printers, and Advantage SQL Database for their accounting. It had worked well for for 6-7 years. Last year the server hardware was upgraded to HP ML350G6 with SmartArray P410 with SAS drives. Everything continued to run well.
A potential software vendor to this customer came in to install a demo of their software without me present. They installed full copy of MS Office 2000, even including FrontPage, MS SQL 2000, MS MapPoint 2006, and a few other pieces of software ON THE SERVER!
All user stations have their application installed which was written in MS Access.
Without me being really specific about the new problems, what do people think of this idea?
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netmarcos
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
USA
2219 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 06/15/2012 : 2:40:15 PM
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Licensing? Patching? Compatibility? Office 2K?! Really? SQL? MapPoint? On your one and only server?
Hang 'em. |
Mark M. Webster
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. - Elbert Hubbard
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Douggg
Major Contributor
972 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 06/15/2012 : 3:54:46 PM
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Dump the customer - If you are their consultant and they didn't consult you before doing this they don't value you or don't have trust in you. It's only a glimpse of what’s to come.
By any chance is this client an attorney or a doctor? My money’s on an attorney.
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wobble_wobble
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Ireland
4517 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 06/15/2012 : 3:58:52 PM
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Ah sure they'll be fine.....MS Access and SQL 2000, its all cutting edge!
What will they suggest next, Windows ME?
On second thoughts, give them a bill, remove the software and find them a worthy solution.
Poor sods. |
Joe
After everything that has happened during the month of Jan 07, I do believe that pigs fly backwards!
http://whatismyv6.com/ |
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ecpsys
Welcome Newcomer
USA
14 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 06/15/2012 : 8:06:22 PM
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A little more of the story:
About 10 days ago I received a call from the customer about having a meeting with this software company about a possible install. So the customer did have good intentions and wasn't trying to keep me out of the process. A week ago the software company wanted to go to the customer and give them a demo. They sat down at the server for a few minutes and then went over to a user station to run a demo CD for two users. What they had actually done at the server is set up a remote user who started installing all this software. Two days later each client computer had been setup for remote access and had the client software installed. I assume they setup remote access in a logon script since they didn't go to each machine in person.
At this point internet and email were hardly working and the system was so slow it was hard to even work on their accounting software. A user station died and the customer assumed that was the entire problem but, of course, a dead hard drive in a user station doesn't take down an entire network. While picking up the dead machine I looked at the server and could not believe what I saw.
Based upon the description and my experience, a doctor or an attorney would be a good guess but I have been there and done that and know better.....
The user station with the bad hard drive was a 9 year old HP evo 510 so I installed a new HP 6200Pro I3-2120 with 4Gb and Win7x64 today. It does work better but DNS lookups, which go through the server, are painfully slow. Many web pages that have numerous different advertisements coming from different addresses can cause a web page to fail even though they are connected to internet through a 3.0mb bonded T-1.
I spoke with a real tech from the software company today and he does seem to know what he is doing. I'm going to meet him at the customer Monday. Task Manager shows 5Gb of physical RAM free and 20-28% CPU util but the system ACTS hammered. I haven't seen SQL 2000 for years but would think the OS would be reporting resources properly.
Even if they can get it to work right, I'm concerned about the security of Office 2000, SQL 2000, etc. The software company says that most of their customers are running Server 2008 R2. Most of my customers are running VMWare and separate virtual Server 2003 for AD, File/Print, and SQL.
The application requires Access on the server. The fact that they installed ALL Office 2000 applications including even Frontpage indicates something is wrong. They tell me that software doesn't need a license. I don't know since I assume nobody would want it, even for free.
If this company must run this application, I would normally do it with VMWare and a separate virtual server or a separate physical machine. With those applications, perhaps a Windows 7x64 user station. |
Edited by - ecpsys on 06/15/2012 8:07:47 PM |
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Office2000, SQL2000, etc. on SERVER!
