Does installing Visual Studio slows down the server?

Miklos_Hollender · 2014-05-12

For making changes in reports or debugging them.

Please stick to the literal question as much as possible instead of suggesting alternatives, or at least suggest better alternatives than the following alternatives which I consider not suitable:

- Doing always everything stricly on a dev server - let me not get into details but there are cases when it is too much of a pain and too much of a cost even to have one, please let's not focus on it. Even though at some level it may be a "best practices" cost-effectiveness in real world often beats best practices in some corner cases at least. It just makes more sense to make a copy of the live database on the live server into a dev-test database and make changes there so that you can test your changes with the latest data, instead of copying a 30GB database over the network or debugging reports on outdated or demo data.

- SQL Builder - yeah, without the document outline try to find something in an invoice, good luck. I would prefer this option as it is more lightweight, but I cannot live without document outline. Document reports in NAV can get incredibly complex with like 10 conditional footers warning customers of everything...

kine · 2014-05-12

and why to have it on server? why not on your notebook/pc?

Miklos_Hollender · 2014-05-13

kine wrote:

and why to have it on server? why not on your notebook/pc?

How would I connect to a server half a continent away? Users connect through VPN + Citrix / RDP etc. it is common today.

Even if that is solvable, taking my company notebook everywhere is not really a good idea when otherwise VPN / RDP works from my hope PC as well or other trusted PCs.

But please, I was specific that I am not really asking for second-rate alternatives but for the original question. It is just smart to prepare for the worst case - be able to quickly look at a garbled looking invoice in a situation where every minute counts because the truck is waiting from everywhere.

kine · 2014-05-13

Ok, just wanted to know.

In my opinion, if you want such solution, it is not problem to install the VS on the server. It should not have impact to common functionality, if there is enough space on the disk. And if you have NAV 2009, you can use the VS express edition. When VS is not started, it should not have impact at the performance at all.

Juhl · 2014-05-13

Agree with Kine

I Always do this, as 2009, 2013 and 2013R2 use different versions of VS.
Tired of trying to keep 3 versions of VS running on my computer and also there is Always problems with my computer not having Rights or beeing a part of their domain.
Never seen a problem in installing VS on a production server.

Miklos_Hollender · 2014-05-14

Thanks you both! And when I start the Visual Studio, be careful with that because it will suck up like 1GB memory from the SQL server? Could affect caching?

BTW why would I upgrade to 2009 now? Of course I am upgrading to 2013 R2 so I need to install VS 2012 according to the system requirements...

Luc_VanDyck · 2014-05-14

Sorry for not sticking to the original question, but which VS license are you going to use on that server? I presume you can't ask your customer to buy a VS license, so are you going to install your license on a customer site server?

kine · 2014-05-14

Luc, in this case, it is ok to use your VS license on the server, if you are the one using it. Developer having VS license, could install it where he want, but he must be one using it. License is per develper, not computer. This is good thing on it...

Miklos_Hollender · 2014-05-14

@Luc - I am the customer. I simply switched over to the internal consulting side. Bought everything from Application Designer to Visual Studio. Try to use external consultants as little as possible, although I am afraid I will have to hand over data migration ( 2 x 2 migration for one subsidiary, ouch, that is going to cost me like €5K) to them because I think the migration toolkit requires Solution Developer licence...

(Is this setup unusual for you? I think for larger companies with subsidiaries it makes sense. About 3 to 5 consulting days a month are equivalent to a decent salary. External consultants spend much of their time on overhead (sales, contract, analysis, design etc. etc. ...) while internally all this is not needed, so basicall at the price of 3-5 days a month you get at least 15 days of development and 5 on the rest, while for external consultantds 15 days of development is 10 days of paid overhead (analysis, design) and 5 days of unpaid (sales, contract) so it gets more efficient. But even more importantly, a truly tight system is only possible with internal development because it goes into like 500 days and that is too expensive. For example I made XML interfaces to upload item ledgers from every subsidiary to a central database and make a global inventory report showing it in every country for the HQ to manage. How much would be like externally with all that analysis and design? €50K ? Nobody accepts a quote like that. But internally, I just sat down and coded it up, quickly, on a fixed salary, finishing it in less than two weeks because I did not need to write complicated contracts and long analysis papers to cover my bottom. So this setup has advantages.)

kine · 2014-05-14

And in most cases ends with next upgrade which cost the company too much because transfering all the customization is cost killer. Of course, depends on the way how they are done, versions etc...

Miklos_Hollender · 2014-05-16

@kine yes, that is why upgrades get postponed as long as possible, as they are simply less important - as long as it works with the infrastructure legislatory fixes can be downgraded - than the customizations that save hundreds of work-hours a week. I have seen 2.6 systems still being used in 2009 (although with technical upgrades, I really hate that that is no longer possible). I could basically hold on in 2009 Classic, not upgrading, lose support at NAV2017 or so, then downgrade legislatory fixes, and sort of have it OK for at least 5 years but I guess that would not be responsible, so I am trying to upgrade the least customized subsidiary now and see how hard it gets.

Luc_VanDyck · 2014-10-31

kine wrote:

Luc, in this case, it is ok to use your VS license on the server, if you are the one using it. Developer having VS license, could install it where he want, but he must be one using it. License is per develper, not computer. This is good thing on it...

Sorry to bring this up again, but I recently discovered this blog posting: How do I License for Developing, Testing, Designing and Demonstration? – MSDN and Visual Studio where you can read:

I) Installation and Use Rights.

a) General. One user may install and use copies of the software to design, develop, test and demonstrate your programs. You may not use the software in a production environment, including staging on a server in a production environment.

Who is right here? Can it be used in a production environment (= on the server of the customer) or not?

kine · 2014-10-31

@Luc> I think this is about the software available as part of the MSDN itself. But as each time, discussion about licensing is in most cases useless, because our point of view will be different than Microsoft's one...

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Does installing Visual Studio slows down the server?

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