Im an IT assistant at a CNC milling company and we use a program called made2manage. Its an ERP (enterprise resource management) software. Each license is something like 5k and instead of giving each employee there own copy of the software he has everyone that uses the program connect to a server that has a copy of m2m on it. Its slow when there are a bunch of people connected to it. But I guess they dont want to buy more licenses.
Is there a better way to do something like this? How bad of a practice is this?
Run performance monitors like perfmon or taskmanager when there is low use and run it again when there is high use (maybe early morning and again in the afternoon). Compare the results during the different times and it should tell you whether or not your server hardware is an issue.
Like zored said, it's a pretty common practice but if your hardware is below specs then things will run slow. Some ERP software require a strong server especially if the database is run on the same server as the application.
Running stuff of a Terminal server is somewhat common. We have several special cause applications licensed for a limited number of concurrent users that we run on a Terminal server combined with a limit to the number of users.
Since, it is performing badly, it sounds like your Terminal server may be below specs, you may need to do some investigation and bump up the hardware allocated to that system. Or, at least change user limit on the server so that only a reasonable number of people can connect and still have the application perform at acceptable levels.
Assuming the usage is within the license terms, I don't think there is anything wrong with the practice.
It may actually be illegal, depending on what the license reads. If it says "CPU" or "machine" then you're clear. If it says "seat" then you are in violation of the license, regardless of how many machines it's installed on.
The server with TS and the M2M client software - it's not also the SQL Server for M2M, is it? Because if it is, then that's your problem.
I'm an IT Manager administering Made2Manage with 55 concurrent licenses with a SQL 2000 backend. The above server setup is not untypical of most m2m installs. things affecting m2m performance:
m2m can run virtualized - just a thouht there
Also depends on what version of M2M you are operating with. V6.0.x is running with quite a bit of Visual Foxpro (VFP) code for the forms and reports. It interfaces with VFP tables that have been upsized to MS-SQL server but much of the behind the curtains in V6 is still VFP. - An issue as Microsoft stopped supporting VFP in 2009.
M2M V7 is still using VFP but not as much. Their next major release is due out at the end of 2014 and support is saying there are no more VFP hooks in it. That's great for performance, bad for continuity. This means any code, custom form, and many of the reports will have to be recreated - (not to mention the data migration). A side note, the licensing issue in V6 is concurrent. They have structured it to allow terminal services on the floor, on multiple shifts. In addition, shop Floor Manager has no license limit.
I have looked looked into upgrading to the latest and greatest, and am not convinced that I want to stay with M2M. Odoo (OpenERP) has made some solid growth in their application, and as long as we are going to have to clean up the mess that is V6.0.x I'm leaning that way.
If you are looking to just keep the monster running - look at a utility called SQL Check. It can show real time performance and show you some processor/disk/memory hogs.