And Not Getting Any Less Busier Fast…
So my big client’s upgrade of accounting software, originally triggered by the need for an unavailable electronic bill format by a small client of theirs, is still irradiating us with its fallout of Murphy rays. Those trigger everything going wrong for no reason, rather than triggering massive growth into a chaotically powerful green being when angered.
For days now they’ve been trying to figure out funky errors generated when editing “prebills.” Must not have enough RAM, or available RAM. Nope, but thanks for playing, and oh by the way what a lovely memory leak your software has introduced on the server since the update, thank you so much for ensuring I noticed.
Etc. and so forth, and suddenly the problem is that MSDE has a 2 gigabyte limit that we have exceeded.
Say what? And you, who got a copy of the data from us and massaged it to allow the upgrade to succeed, didn’t happen to notice then that it was just a tad large? They tell us the software warns you at 1.6 and 1.8 GB, but we must have turned the warnings off.
Suddenly it’s “you will upgrade to SQL Server immediately.” I know we promoted MSDE preferentially back when, because it was free and helped make the cost seem more reasonable, but really we should have told you this limit would come crashing down after a while. So sorry.
The silver lining is that they use SQL Server 6.5 and we have wanted them to upgrade almost since that was first deployed, since 7.0 was so much better. Sinking ten grand or so into this will not just allow them to do frivolous things like, you know, billing their clients, but also will improve the speed of their custom document management software. Assuming it will allow me to modify and redeploy it without freaking out! But hey, at least I should be able to take my time testing, while the old server remains up.
Meanwhile, I am trying to move machines from user to user, reinstalling as I go. The plan was to spend the afternoon doing one of those, even if I couldn’t quite get it deployed before leaving. Well, while I was caught up in the other excitement, the former owner of the machine realized she needed a file from her old computer. Luck! I’d not wiped it yet. Only now it won’t turn on for anything. Acts like the power supply is dead. Which is not what my power supply tester says, but I’m trying a new one anyway. And that’s when we got the news about the database size. I assume first thing tomorrow will be hectic with discussion of what to do and actually ordering a new server and SQL Server to go on it, given the need to fix things ASAP. Then at least we’ll settle down into waiting…
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