Hi all,
I have an odd issue we are trying to get to the bottom of for one customer and I'm hoping one of you might have some ideas!
They are running Opera 3 VFP in a virtualised environment. Opera is installed on an application server and the end users run it from an RDS server. They have an extremely large weekly payroll with 5000 - 7000 employees depending on the time of year. They have found that running the payroll calculation directly on the APP server saves them up to 10 minutes when compared with running the calculation on the RDS server. It's a very time pressured payroll so they are constantly looking for time savings anywhere and everywhere.
This approach was working well for them until recently. Now they have found that when they log onto the APP server and run the calculation the end users experience on the RDS server is impacted. Opening the payroll processing form goes from 1 second pre APP server calc to 4 seconds post APP server calc. Searching in payroll processing is also affected, this goes from 1 second pre APP calc to 4-5 seconds post APP server calc. Users have also reported that their RDS flickers or goes black intermittently after the APP calc. In order to clear the issue a full shutdown must be run to log all users out of Opera, this seems to reset it and it all works as normal again. It's not related to the user account which logged onto the APP server to run the calc as we've had them log off the system completely afterwards and this has made no difference.
The customer has a test system setup independent of their main system so we have attempted to replicate the issue. We have found that it's not the calculation process itself that's the issue but rather the opening and closing of a payroll form. See below.
1. Users logged in on RDS, One user logs into onto 'Opera-PC' but doesn't open Opera - no speed issues.
2. Users logged in on RDS, One user logs into onto 'Opera-PC' opens Opera but makes no changes and opens no forms - no speed issues.
3. Users logged in on RDS, One user logs into onto 'Opera-PC' opens Opera and opens forms from other ledgers (not payroll) i.e sales processing - no speed issues.
4. Users logged in on RDS, One user logs into onto 'Opera-PC' opens Opera and opens payroll processing then a form from the action menu i.e details and bank - immediate speed issues for every user. Searching in payroll processing goes from being almost instant to 4 seconds to return results. We consistently recreated this 4 times - resetting each time with a shutdown in Opera which appears to resolve the issues.
5. Repeated scenario 4 but this time using the RDS server and the APP server - exactly the same result.
Pegasus have advised it is an environment issue, which it might well be but we have no idea what! The servers are Windows Server 2016. I've tried upgrading to Opera 3 v2.80 and this has made no difference.
I believe the RDS server and the APP server reside on the same host server (I'm trying to confirm this).
I'm hoping that some here might have some ideas of where we can look or point their IT company at.
Thanks,
Alex
