Great Plains Installation and Conversion Overview for Consultant
Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP is MS SQL Server based application, which makes it feasible to entrust installation procedure to either Dynamics GP technical consultant, or SQL DBA. Support and performance tuning is likely to be in the hand of your internal DBA, if you are large organization
If you are small or small-to-midsize business with up to 10
Great Plains users, you should consider GP installation, initial conversion and
on-going performance tuning to be outsourced to Great Plains Reseller or
consultant. We would like to give you
some intro paragraphs, so you could go from there:
1.
MS SQL Server installation. Please, note here, that you cannot just
follow the defaults in MS SQL Server installation, and here is where you have
to intervene. First of all, Dynamic GP
requires SQL mixed security mode, while default suggests you to pick Windows
only authentication. Second, and this is
coming to the scenes when you are ordering powerful Windows 2003 or 2008 server
hardware ? your SCSI disks arrays should be configured to optimize Great Plains
performance. Separate RAID I is
recommended for Operating System, separate RAID I for SQL log files, separate
RAID 5 or RAID 10 for MS SQL Databases
2.
Windows 2003 server configuration. This question is probably not so important if
you are small organization and you are counting on Windows 2008 or 2003 Small
Business Server. However in larger
organization, you have to change default Windows Server settings. The idea here is to give maximum performance
to network responses and background processes (SQL Server responding to Great
Plains user workstations). At this time,
Winter 2008-2009 we are confident in 64 bit Windows Servers, especially when
you do not plan to use non-SQL applications directly at the server console (as
some of them might still be not compatible with 64 bit Windows, example is FRx
Sysdata folder)
3.
GP E-learning at Microsoft Business Solutions
Customer Source. If you are implementing
Dynamics GP in your organization, you obviously paid for at least one year of
Dynamics GP annual enhancement program and you should create accounts for your
key GP internal support people in Customer Source. eLearning comes are great benefit for you and
we recommend your GP technical support employees to take online courses on
Dynamics GP Installation, configuration and support
4.
Great Plains Upgrade. Here you first have to be sure that you are
current in Great Plains annual enhancement program and if you are not ? to work
with your Great Plains VAR to get reenrolled.
Being current in the program gives you new version (currently Great
Plains 10.0) registration key
5.
Great Plains Data Conversion. For initial data conversions you can purchase
Great Plains Integration Manager conversion, valid for initial implementation
period. If you need ongoing conversion
and if you think GP user could be involved, consider GP Integration Manager
Financials and Logistics. If you have C#
or VB .Net programmer in staff , you should review eConnect SDK
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