If your users are reporting that FeneVision is slow, these are some guidelines you can follow for troubleshooting FeneVision performance.
Please note that performance troubleshooting falls outside the Scope of Support due to the complex and highly variable relationships between the software, hardware, and networks used in each of our customers' environments. However, assistance may be available from our Development or Professional Services teams through a performance tuning project, which is tailored to your IT environment. To request a performance tuning project, please contact your account manager.
Before engaging in this troubleshooting, please confirm that your servers and client PCs meet our Hardware and Software Requirements. Note that these requirements were designed for companies with one manufacturing location and an average database size. Exceeding the requirements is recommended if your company has multiple manufacturing locations, a large database (100GB+), or many simultaneous users (50+).
Defining the problem
- What part of FeneVision is slow? We need to know the application, module, screen, and action of the user (what button are they pressing?).
- When did the slowness begin? Does this provide clues to the root cause? Consider:
- Environmental changes
- Operating system updates on the client PCs or the database server
- Changes to network configuration and/or firewalls
- Changes to hardware on the client PCs or database server
- Changes within FeneVision
- Increases in the amount of simultaneous users (such as many new customers starting to use WEB)
- New product configuration deployed recently
- New modules enabled recently
- Environmental changes
- How slow is it? We need a baseline of time it takes to perform the action so we can demonstrate improvement through troubleshooting.
- What is the scope of the slowness?
- Is it slow on the client PCs, database server, or both?
- How many PCs are affected (one vs. many)?
- How many users are affected (one vs. many)?
- How many orders/invoices/schedules/products affected (one vs. many)?
- Example: "Starting last week, when I open the Route Builder screen in CORE, the list of available routes takes 2 minutes to load. This happens only on my PC. On the server, it loads in 12 seconds."
General Troubleshooting
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On your database server, open Task Manager and click the Performance tab. This gives you a high-level overview of the resource usage on your server during the slowness.
- Look for high CPU usage (exceeding 90%). This indicates the server is reaching the limits of its performance.
- We expect Memory to be near 100% at all times, so do not be concerned if it is high. SQL Server will reserve as much memory as it can get, and does not release the memory unless another process demands it. Aim to exceed the size of your FVMaster database in RAM (for example, if your FVMaster database is 200GB in size, aim to have more than 200GB of RAM on the server). This avoids SQL needing to hit the storage drives, which process data much more slowly than RAM.
- If the slowness does not appear to be caused by network or PC-specific issues, you can try rebooting the FeneVision database server during downtime. Allow for up to 15 minutes of downtime to do this.
- On the FeneVision database server, verify the latest SQL Server service pack is installed.
- If reports are slow to generate, restart the SQL Server Reporting Services service on the FeneVision database server.
For advanced troubleshooting techniques for database administrators, see this related guide: Performance Troubleshooting - Advanced