Advanced Epicor 9.05 troubleshooting

Sometimes we get caught up in chasing the shiny. You know - the latest, greatest whatever it is that is out there. I am saving my allowance for a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 to replace my (practically ancient by smart phone standards) three year old Samsung Galaxy S3. The S3 does everything that I need a phone to do and as my wife is keen to tell me if it works for what I need it for, why upgrade? My response on these matters is typically “because it’s better!!!”, but, I appreciate that not everyone wants or can always be using the latest and greatest.
[NJA - update 20170109] - I actually waited, and saved my allowance for a Nexus 6p :slight_smile:

For those that love (and are able to chase) the shiny, the ERP10.1 release is blinding (I work in support and not marketing, so I hope that gives that statement the proper weight - I’m very excited to support ERP 10.1) - the changes to the IIS cache notification, print routing, RDD to RDL dataset sync(!), Performance Diagnostic Tool memory dump analysis, and server side tracing options alone are worth the upgrade IMHO, but there are many others. But, for those of you out there that Epicor 9.05 (hopefully you’re on at least 9.05.702a!) or an even earlier release is good enough and does everything you need right now, it is always worth it to learn more about the system that you are already using. At the 2014 Vegas Insights user conference and a few Epicor User Groups I presented on Advanced Epicor and OpenEdge Troubleshooting for Epicor 9.05. Spent 100’s of hours putting together the content so that those that don’t plan (or simply just can’t) upgrade in the near term can learn more about the system that you have now to address some of those potentially annoying issues that you’ve experienced with for years but never got around to looking into them because there were workarounds; OpenEdge temp files growing out of control, lock-wait timeouts in your Progress database, general slowness, printing stopping every Monday with your SQL database (aka: Support lovingly refers to this condition as “a case of the SQL Mondays”), log file growth issues, and so on. Those that attended that session were provided a URL to the slide deck and a number of extras that I put together to help those out there that want to really learn “what happens IF…” or “what does that do?” had enough information to learn how to do so.

  • Two troubleshooting recordings (approx 30 minutes each) that use most of the advanced techniques I mentioned in the presentation so you can see some actual examples in actions. One of the situations is in the interest of full disclosure 100% contrived to illustrate some of the techniques, but the other is real world and at the end of that one you see why 9.05.60x may not be your forever release if you are still on that major version (sorry if I spoiled the ending for anyone :frowning: ).

  • A zip file with all the answerbook KBs referenced throughout the presentation.

  • A homework spreadsheet with some ideas to get you started to see “what happens IF” you do something that you were always curious about, but were much too reasonable to actually do in your production environment (Support really appreciates your restraint in not breaking your production system).

  • And a text file with links to some of the webex recordings I created over the years on how to install certain things like Enterprise Search, Epicor Replication and installing OpenEdge/Sonic on an admin workstation to name just a few examples of recordings.

After reviewing the material spend some time on the homework portion, really. Personally, I find that the best way to learn about something that already works is to take it apart piece by piece and then try to fix it again(make sure you do the homework on a non-production server please and thank you) and that is what the homework is all about; some examples on things you can “break” on purpose so you can see the outcome in the various standard and advanced troubleshooting logs that are available.

Happy controlled breaking in the pursuit of knowledge!

–Onedrive link to material

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

4 Likes

Nathan,
Thanks a lot. This information is greatly appreciated. Now I’ll be able find out why they say don’t press the red button.

Cheers

Great share! Thank you

Hey Nathan - The OneDrive link on this one is no longer working it appears… Any chance of a rehost?

:open_mouth: Well, that is what I get for using my personal Onedrive account.
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I have uploaded the recordings, the presentation pptx, and the zip file with the KB articles to the following location. Have to go through my backups to find the other files–when I find them, I’ll upload them here.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aURa4ZuGAXDpAVL0Q2P-gekkH3ugyUEH?usp=sharing

1 Like

Could I trouble you for these files if you still have them?