Microsoft Dynamics GP running at an appalling slow speed

On a recent project we encountered an issue with the test ssytem running remarkably slowly in many areas. While logging in took longer than it should have, even opening the SmartList window was taking 45 seconds; when a SmartList favourite was selected, each column header and field was drawn slowly enough that it could be read before the next one appeared.

Posting a Payables batch with 50 invoices would take more than 50 minutes (I’m not sure how long it took as that was when I disconnected my session and let it run to completion by itself at the end of the day).

We installed a client directly onto the SQL Server for testing purposes and found that the speed was what we would expect to see, rather than the snails pace the users were seeing.

One of the network team noticed that the traffic speed going over the network was very ;pw compared to what should have been possible and lower than we’d expect to see. The entire environment was a virtualised one and all machines were configured with virtual 10Gbit network cards; the solution was to remove the virtual 10Gbit ethernet cards and replace with 1Gbit.

After this change was made on both the SQL Server and terminal servers, users saw the performance of Microsoft Dynamics GP increase across the board. SmartList would open in three seconds, a favourite would return rows of data far faster than could be read and batch posting was rapid.

I’m not sure if there was a peculiarity elsewhere in the system contributing to the slowness, but the only change made at that time was the replacement of the virtual ethernet cards.