Prophet 21 Archives - EstesGroup

Elastic Computing Revolutionizes Business Dynamics

by EstesCloud | Sep 26, 2023 | Backup, Business Consulting, Business Direction, Cloud, Disaster Recovery, Distribution, ERP, Managed IT Services, Prophet 21, Security, SYSPRO

Cloud Resources are Changing the Manufacturing and Distribution Industry Landscapes

In the world of cloud options for businesses, elastic computing refers to the ability to dynamically scale computing resources up or down based on demand, without the need for significant manual intervention. It involves the use of cloud computing and virtualization technologies to provide flexibility and cost-efficiency in managing IT infrastructure. This allows for greater flexibility and scalability, as resources can be easily scaled up or down based on dynamic business needs. Cloud computing also eliminates the need for organizations to invest in and maintain their own physical infrastructure, such as on-site servers, reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

What is Virtualization?

Virtualization, on the other hand, involves creating a virtual version of a device or resource, such as a server, operating system, or storage device. This virtualization technology allows multiple virtual instances to run on a single physical machine, effectively maximizing the utilization of hardware resources. By consolidating multiple virtual machines onto a single physical server, organizations can reduce the number of physical servers required, leading to cost savings in terms of hardware, power, and cooling.

Bringing Cloud and Virtualization Together

When combined, cloud computing and virtualization technologies offer numerous benefits for managing IT infrastructure. Firstly, they provide flexibility in terms of resource allocation. With cloud computing, organizations can easily scale up or down their computing resources based on their needs, ensuring that they have the right amount of resources at any given time. Virtualization allows for the efficient utilization of hardware resources, enabling organizations to make the most of their existing infrastructure.

Pay-As-You-Go, Quick-To-Market Technologies

At the end of the day, new cloud-based technologies offer cost savings throughout the entire business ecosystem. By leveraging cloud computing, organizations can avoid the upfront costs associated with purchasing and maintaining physical infrastructure. Instead, they can pay for the resources they actually use on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Virtualization further reduces costs by allowing organizations to consolidate their hardware resources, reducing the number of physical servers required and the associated costs of power, cooling, and maintenance.

Additionally, cloud computing and virtualization technologies enhance the agility and scalability of IT infrastructure. With cloud computing, organizations can quickly provision and deploy resources, allowing for faster time-to-market for new applications and services. Virtualization enables organizations to easily scale their infrastructure up or down based on demand, ensuring that they can meet changing business needs without disruption.

Furthermore, these technologies improve the reliability and availability of IT infrastructure. Cloud computing providers typically offer robust infrastructure with built-in redundancy and failover mechanisms, ensuring high availability of services.

Virtualization also enhances reliability by isolating virtual machines from each other, preventing issues in one virtual machine from affecting others.

The use of cloud computing and virtualization technologies in managing IT infrastructure provides organizations with flexibility, cost-efficiency, agility, scalability, reliability, and availability. By leveraging these technologies, organizations can optimize their resource utilization, reduce costs, and improve their overall IT operations. Here are the top 10 benefits of elastic computing for manufacturing and distribution businesses:

Scalability

Elastic computing allows businesses to easily scale their IT infrastructure to accommodate fluctuating demand, ensuring that resources are available when needed without over-provisioning.

Cost Efficiency

By scaling resources up or down as required, businesses can optimize their IT costs, paying only for the computing power they actually use, reducing overall expenses.

Resource Optimization

It enables efficient use of computing resources, avoiding underutilization during periods of low demand and preventing resource bottlenecks during peak periods.

Improved Performance

Elasticity ensures that applications and systems can maintain consistent performance levels even during traffic spikes or increased workloads.

Flexibility

Businesses can quickly adapt to changing market conditions or unexpected events, such as seasonal variations in demand or unforeseen disruptions by adjusting computing resources in real time.

Reduced Downtime

Elastic computing minimizes the risk of system failures or downtime due to resource constraints, as additional resources can be provisioned automatically in response to increased load.

Enhanced Disaster Recovery

Elastic computing can support robust disaster recovery and backup solutions, enabling businesses to replicate their systems across multiple locations or cloud regions for data redundancy and resilience.

Global Reach

Businesses can leverage cloud providers’ global data center networks to expand their operations into new regions and markets without the need for physical infrastructure investments.

Resource Isolation

Elastic computing can provide resource isolation and security, ensuring that applications and data remain protected even when sharing cloud infrastructure with other users.

Agility and Innovation

With the ability to rapidly provision and experiment with new resources and technologies, businesses can innovate more quickly and bring new products or services to market faster.

The Value in Cloud Elasticity

In manufacturing and distribution, elastic computing is particularly valuable because it allows companies to handle seasonal demand fluctuations, respond to supply chain disruptions, and efficiently manage their IT costs. In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing marketplace, businesses need to be agile in order to stay competitive. This means being able to quickly adapt to new trends, technologies, and customer demands. Agility allows companies to respond swiftly to market changes, seize new opportunities, and stay ahead of the competition.

However, agility alone is not enough. Businesses also need to ensure the reliability and performance of their critical systems. These systems are the backbone of the organization, supporting key operations and processes. Any downtime or performance issues can have severe consequences, such as lost revenue, damaged reputation, and dissatisfied customers.

By combining agility with reliability and performance, businesses can achieve a winning formula. They can swiftly respond to market changes while maintaining the stability and efficiency of their critical systems. This requires a careful balance between innovation and stability, as well as a robust infrastructure and effective risk management strategies.

Agility enables businesses to quickly adapt their strategies, products, and services to meet changing customer needs and preferences. It allows them to experiment, iterate, and pivot as necessary, without being tied down by rigid processes or outdated technologies. This flexibility is crucial in a dynamic marketplace where customer expectations are constantly evolving.

On the other hand, reliability and performance ensure that businesses can deliver on their promises consistently. Customers expect products and services to work flawlessly, without any disruptions or delays. Critical systems, such as e-commerce platforms, supply chain management systems, or customer support systems, need to be highly available, scalable, and efficient. This requires robust infrastructure, rigorous testing, and proactive monitoring to identify and address any issues before they impact the business.

Why Manufacturers and Distributors are Choosing EstesCloud

Businesses need both agility, reliability, and performance to thrive in today’s dynamic manufacturing and distribution industry landscape. Agility allows companies to adapt and innovate, while reliability and performance ensure that their critical systems can support their operations effectively. By striking the right balance between these two factors, businesses can remain competitive, deliver exceptional customer experiences, and achieve long-term success.

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EstesGroup Fall ’23 Prophet 21 Summit

by Brad Feakes | Sep 11, 2023 | Cloud, ERP, ERP Consulting, Hosting, Managed IT Services, Prophet 21

Prophet 21 Summit Virtual EstesGroup Distribution P21

Mastering Prophet 21 in 2023

This past February, EstesGroup’s own Brent Merritt presented to the Carolinas’ Prophet 21 World Wide User Group chapter on the subject of P21 architecture best practices. Then we went out to a very fine Cajun restaurant with a live band and spicy food. The band was so fun and the food so good that we ended up ordering far too many desserts, in an attempt to extend the evening. I wasn’t hungry for days. Moreover, Brent’s presentation was so well received that we thought it would be a nice idea to give that presentation to a broader audience.

Are you looking to confirm whether your P21 hardware configuration is appropriate? Or are you about to refresh your on-premise P21 environment? Or are you considering scaling up or scaling out your existing P21 ecosystem, to accommodate organizational growth? And what impact will this have on the P21 database or application layers? On September 21st, 2023, Brent Merritt will provide answers to these common P21 questions and more. The EstesGroup team will also present on SQL Server Query Optimization and Web UI Migration Best Practices. Guests from our Partner Network will include DCKAP, Web Connect, and Conveyance.

P21 Summit Agenda

All Prophet 21 Sessions are Noted in Central Time

11 AM: P21 Architecture Best Practices – Brent Merritt, EstesGroup
Noon: Integrated Distribution Commerce for P21 Users – DCKAP
1 PM: From Inbox to Order: Streamlining the P21 Sales Process – Web Connect
2 PM: Introduction to P21 APIs – Conveyance
3 PM: SQL Server Query Optimization – Brad Vandenbogaerde, EstesGroup
4 PM: Web UI Migration Best Practices – EstesGroup IT Team

DCKAP

EstesGroup has long been partners and friends with the DCKAP team. P21 ecommerce is an important topic for many Prophet 21 distributors, so we’ve had a lot to talk about. In 2022, I attended DCKAP’s Round-Up event in Austin, TX, to discuss hybrid cloud strategies.

At last year’s Estes’ Integrate 2022 event, DCKAP’s Aaron Pallares presented a Distributor’s Guide To Breaking Operational Silos. Estes is excited to have DCKAP on board once again to discuss the intersection of Prophet 21 distribution and ecommerce.

Web Connect for Prophet 21

One fortuitous outcome of this year’s P21WWUG CONNECT 2023 event was the opportunity Estes had to start a new friendship with the team at Web Connect. The Web Connect team delivers a suite of P21-integrated utilities that extend and expand on Prophet 21’s native functionality. Whether it’s automating the P21 quoting and ordering processes, providing customers with access to P21 information, or helping P21 sales users access and communicate their P21 sales data in new and exciting ways, Web Connect continues to help P21 users optimize their sales processes. EstesGroup is looking forward to the Web Connect team’s insights on how technology can bolster a company’s Prophet 21 sales processes.

Conveyance Solutions

EstesGroup has been working hand-in-hand with our consulting partners from Conveyance Solutions, often working together both on P21 implementations and P21 optimizations. The Conveyance team brings a wealth of knowledge to the table when it comes to implementing Prophet 21. One such subject is the matter of the P21 API. Prophet 21’s API is a nebulous subject for many of us, as it differs significantly from the earlier P21 integration solutions that predated the P21 Middleware Server.

But just what is the P21 API? What are APIs in general? How is it related to Epicor’s Prophet 21 web version? And how can the Prophet 21 API be put to use to automate processes and integrate the P21 application with third-party solutions? The Conveyance team will be tackling this topic at our Fall ’23 Prophet 21 Summit.

Prophet 21 World Wide User Group – Lake Erie Insights

Earlier this summer, Estes own Brad Vandenbogaerde headed down to Cleveland to hang out with the P21WWUG Lake Erie chapter and to give a workshop on some Prophet 21 SQL query optimization techniques. Unfortunately, some technical challenges prevented him from accessing the necessary server domains, resulting in a more broadly-spanning conversation on P21 SQL Server tips and techniques. On September 21st, Brad will revisit his original presentation on Prophet 21 SQL queries.

P21WWUG CONNECT 2023 Insights

One of the most surprising discoveries from this year’s P21WWUG CONNECT 2023 event was the realization that a huge volume of the user community is still utilizing the legacy P21 desktop application. The migration to the P21 web client has been much slower than anticipated. While many customers are experimenting with the P21 Middleware Server layer, much of what is being conducted against the last P21 2021 version that supports both the P21 Middleware Server and the P21 Desktop client. This creates a problem because that version is a suboptimal way to transition into the Web UI version due to performance issues. Worse still, this version is losing support in the near future. The Estes’ team will spend the final session at the Fall ’23 Prophet 21 Summit addressing this subject, based on the work we’ve performed in helping customers make this important move. What is the best way to approach a P21 web migration from a planning perspective? And what are the most common hangups when migrating to the web version, and how are they most easily resolved? We’ll cover answers to both questions during this session.

The Fall ’23 Prophet 21 Summit Brings Your P21 Problems to an End

The EstesGroup team will be concluding the final session early to allow us to hold a roundtable discussion and to allow our attendees to bring up any and all of their P21 questions. Our P21 consulting staff will provide real-time answers. Epicor Prophet 21 events are a great opportunity for our team to better understand the needs of our user community and to provide some P21 help to our customers and friends. We look forward to seeing you there!

How to Optimize Prophet 21 Performance

by Brad Feakes | Jun 16, 2023 | Cloud, Epicor, ERP, ERP Implementation, Hosting, Managed IT Services, Prophet 21

Load Balancing the P21 Server Stack into an N-Tier Architecture

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system scalability is always a concern. Your user count grows. The database gets larger. The organization adds branches. As this all snowballs, several interconnected challenges begin to affect an ERP system’s ability to keep up. A central aspect of a company’s overall system performance is the ability to effectively divide user workload when the user count exceeds the capacity of a given application server.

Prophet 21 Load Balancing Performance Optimization

Epicor’s Prophet 21 distribution ERP software is no exception to this general concern, and one significant element of handling performance challenges when scaling your Prophet 21 application relates to load balancing. That said, when understanding how P21 load balancing functions within a P21 installation, it would be helpful to understand some basic application architecture concepts.

A common form of application architecture involves a three-tiered architecture:

At the lowest level, the database server stores and organizes an application’s data.
At the highest level, the user interacts with the application through the client user interface, whether browser-based or desktop-deployed.
The application server is responsible for orchestrating the interaction between the client and the database levels – the business logic at the AppServer level converts requests from the client into commands at the database level.

Epicor’s Kinetic application has such a 3-tiered architecture, going back to the days of its antecedents, E10, Epicor 905, and Epicor Vantage – the Epicor AppServer has long been the hub of Epicor administration. But not all ERP systems had such an architecture. Epicor’s P21 ERP is one such application. Historically, the Epicor Prophet 21 application was a 2-tiered architecture:

The P21 database stored the application’s data, as is the case with most ERP systems.
The P21 desktop application functioned both as the user interface and as the source of the Prophet 21 application’s business logic, communicating directly with the Prophet 21 database.

With the more recent versions of the Prophet 21 application and the introduction of the P21 Middleware Server, the P21 ERP application has taken on a more contemporary 3-tiered architecture. The Prophet 21 Middleware Server is essentially an application server layer. The introduction of the P21 application server layer allowed for innumerable capabilities that had been previously unavailable with the P21 desktop application.

One such capability is the P21 API layer. ERP systems normally provide API connectivity at the application server layer – the ERP API functions in the place of a client application, sending requests to the application server. The application server layer interprets these requests as it would a request from an end user client.

The API layer allows for an exponential increase in integration opportunities, enabling a more decoupled hybrid cloud architecture — one where multi-system interactions no longer had to reside at the database level.

The challenges to scaling a P21 ecosystem don’t end with a three-tier server stack.

As user counts increase, the need for additional application servers similarly increases. And with fluctuations in the timing that users access the application, it becomes difficult to manage and balance the user load across the overall environment. This can lead to performance bottlenecks, among other things. Enter P21 load balancing.

A system admin can implement load balancing in one of several forms. Load balancing can occur from within the application itself – the application decides how a given user session will be handled. An admin can also choose to implement load balancing from outside the application, using an external load balancer.

When using an external load balancing appliance to level out your P21 ERP user sessions, the load balancer controls the user flow differently than a traditional 3-tiered application configuration. In such an environment, the client application speaks first to the load balancer, rather than speaking to the middleware server directly. Based in the middleware servers available, and the current load profiles in play, the load balancer guides the client request to the appropriate P21 middleware server.

What makes external load balancing of your P21 environment so helpful is its transparency – the balancing of user load is, in fact, invisible to the end users involved. This allows your P21 administrator to fine-tune performance over time, as load patterns surface.

Better still, the use of an external load balancer adds a layer of security, allowing for identify management, multi-factor authentication, and security group management, to better lock down and secure your P21 enterprise. This abstraction of the application server from the client allows for a truly N-tiered architecture: an architecture that can segregate various interactions with the P21 database, allowing for a diverse orchestration of functionality and capability.

Prophet 21 Performance in Action

EstesGroup provided the infrastructure for the P21 Lake Erie User Group meeting in December of 2022 at the Embassy Suites hotel in the greater Cleveland area. This Epicor Prophet 21 ecosystem included a load balanced P21 middleware server layer. A depiction of the system architecture can be seen in the image below:

Do you need help optimizing your Epicor Prophet 21 performance? Please fill out the form below, or chat with us now, to begin a conversation with a P21 expert today!

5 Reasons to Visit BOOTH 40 at CONNECT 2023

by EstesCloud | Jun 2, 2023 | Cloud, Epicor, ERP Consulting, Hosting, Managed IT Services, Prophet 21

Do you have questions about your Epicor Prophet 21 ERP software performance or its underlying technology? Come see us in Booth 40 this August in Dallas at P21WWUG CONNECT 2023! EstesGroup is proud to be a GOLD SPONSOR for this year’s event!

EstesGroup’s mission as an Epicor Prophet 21 consultancy and cloud services provider is to help you build valuable partnerships that not only help you meet your goals but also bring you unexpected wins! With this in mind, we’re bringing a few of our best P21 consultants to Texas this August so that you can get your questions answered. Visit us at BOOTH 40 to learn the latest tips, tricks, and best practices for your enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects!

Here are five reasons to visit our Epicor Prophet 21 consultants in BOOTH 40 at P21WWUG CONNECT 2023:

1. Build industry-specific roadmaps for your ERP super users.

Don’t hit the P21 road without roadmaps that are based on real-life scenarios and success stories. Come visit our team to learn how EstesGroup customers have leveraged our expertise for ERP and IT success. Come ask to be introduced to the companies that trust us with all of their Epicor Prophet 21 needs. Our customers can save you time and money by showing you how a partnership with EstesGroup gave them not only the map but also the road to win the race against the fierce competition they face in today’s market!

Receive guidance on integrating Prophet 21 with other business systems and processes and on advancing your business with the latest technology.
Discuss strategies for inventory management, demand forecasting, supply chain optimization, and more (if you can think IT, we can do IT!).

2. Learn the trends at CONNECT 2023 and then set the trends for 2024.

Come talk to our Prophet 21 experts to gain valuable industry insights and stay updated on the latest trends in distribution. Discover why “THE CLOUD” is one of the most controversial trends shaking the industry.

Learn about strategies for digital transformation and automation in distribution.
Explore our comprehensive solution showcase to discover cutting-edge solutions tailored for distribution.

3. Get inspired to set your ERP system on fire — with the fastest cloud on the market.

Come work with our consultants to develop innovative strategies and best practices to optimize distribution operations through cutting-edge cloud-based technology. Explore EstesGroup’s track record of successful Prophet 21 implementations and cloud migrations to ECHO, our managed hosting solution.

Learn about the benefits of managed hosting services for Prophet 21 from EstesGroup.
Discover the latest advancements in cloud hosting and its impact on distribution operations.

4. Add your IONS to CONNECT 2023

CONNECTIONS. CONNECTIONS. CONNECTIONS. Booth 40 will be the ultimate place for you to network with industry peers, exchange ideas, and build valuable connections. Charge and recharge your strategies by learning from the P21WWUG community!

Get hands-on demonstrations of advanced features and functionalities of Prophet 21.
Receive personalized consultations on how to leverage Prophet 21 for business growth.

5. Hear “IT” straight from the horse’s mouth.

There’s nothing like the inspiration you feel when you hear a success story in person. Join us to learn from real-world success stories and case studies shared by our technology experts. Find EstesGroup IT road warriors in Dallas this summer, and you’ll hear stories about the distribution industry that you’ll never forget! Considering a cloud migration? Our cloud consulting team has seen it all!

Discuss specific pain points and challenges with EstesGroup’s experienced consultants.
Take advantage of exclusive knowledge (and offers!) available only at the P21WWUG CONNECT 2023 booth! (P.S. EstesGroup has earned a reputation as the most helpful Epicor Prophet 21 consultancy and cloud provider for a reason… if you can’t make it to Booth 40 this August, schedule a little time with us to hear what you missed — our ERP and IT consultants are available 24x7x365 and would love to help your business!)

Will you be at “The WWUG” this August?

Attending P21WWUG CONNECT 2023 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for distribution industry leaders. The Prophet 21 World Wide User Group hosts this event annually. In 2023, there will be exciting new technology and third-party solutions for wholesale distribution businesses to explore.

At this year’s EstesGroup booth, you can gain knowledge, explore solutions, and connect with experts in your field. These activities will empower you to drive growth, efficiency, and success in your everyday use of Epicor Prophet 21.

P21WWUG brings together a community of like-minded professionals, including super users, consultants, and industry experts. This year’s CONNECT event offers you an excellent chance to network and exchange insights with peers using Prophet 21.

At P21WWUG CONNECT 2023, Epicor may share the latest updates, enhancements, and future development plans for Prophet 21. Super users can learn about upcoming features, improvements, and technological advancements. You will gain a competitive edge by staying informed about your software’s direction.

Your super users can learn from experienced industry professionals who have successfully implemented Prophet 21. As an attendee, you can join sessions or panel discussions. Experts in these sessions will share their strategies, the challenges they faced, and the lessons they have learned. This will provide you with valuable insights so that you can improve your own implementation and usage of P21.

CONNECT 2023 features hands-on training sessions and workshops. These sessions can help super users deepen their understanding of Prophet 21 functionalities and explore advanced features. Learning from experts and discovering new ways to leverage the software can enhance team member skills and efficiency.

P21WWUG CONNECT 2023 provides a platform for new P21 users and super users alike. This venue facilitates collaboration and idea exchange between professionals who face similar challenges. Participants at the event can gain valuable insights and potential solutions by engaging in discussions, roundtable sessions, or informal conversations.

P21 Public Web Client Access – Who’s Your Proxy?

by Marshall Douglas | Apr 14, 2023 | Backup, Cloud, Distribution, Epicor, Managed IT Services, Prophet 21

ERP systems have traditionally had a functionality-accessibility problem: ERP systems were highly functional, but not especially accessible – they normally required desktop fat-client applications for access, and these were often hamstrung by local access requirements, making applications far from mobile.

As internet architectures became more and more robust, the possibility of web browser-based ERP became a reality, with new ERP vendors designing and building their software around the browser, and legacy vendors systems hastening to retrofit their existing ERP systems to accommodate the browser-based future.

But this introduced a new problem – one of accessibility vs security: the high levels of availability increased the possibility that threat actors could access a company’s ERP system remotely, and cause havoc to company data.

Most load balancers make it relatively easy to have an app safely deployed publicly. Normally, you run a reverse proxy server that passes traffic to your web app. This obfuscates the info for the destination of the web app and basically acts as a secure gateway to the internal resource. At EstesGroup, P21 Web UI is protected by MFA via a reverse proxy to the identity provider as well. However, administration of the Prophet 21 application introduces additional challenges. The P21 web login page contains a gear icon.

If a P21 user clicks the gear, they can access the Middleware server URL value, along with its port.

This introduces several complications:

It basically shows users a free shortcut around MFA. A clever user can copy and paste the Middleware URL and port into their browser and access the P21 application directly, avoiding the MFA.
The Middleware server URL and port are resolved on the P21 client side of the P21 application when logging in. This means, even though the Load Balancer can reverse proxy to the internal resource, it’s not going to be able to resolve the specific Middleware server URL on the P21 client side to complete the P21 login.

To get around these challenges, you might initially think to expose the Prophet 21 Middleware server to the internet and add a public DNS entry for it. But to directly expose P21 Middleware servers to the internet in that manner is a monumental risk. Another option is required.

To address the above issue, we do the following:

We create a middleware reverse proxy to direct traffic to the middleware servers.
We direct the P21 Web configurations to use the middleware proxy for its respective Middleware Server.
We then expose the reverse proxies to the internet, creating DNS records for each of them.

By exposing the Middleware server proxies to the internet through a public DNS instead of the middleware servers themselves, you add a line of defense to the servers, only passing that needed traffic and keeping P21 Middleware Servers from being directly internet-exposed.

Another advantage of reverse proxying is the ability to intercept direct-access attempts. Theoretically, one might try to plug in the Middleware proxy URLs publicly and get access to the P21 API or the P21 Web UI. The reverse proxy allows for the functionality to block certain endpoints, such as the API or web client. When a user sees the Middleware URL in the P21 login settings, if they try to get around MFA and plug that URL in, they get a lovely 403 page, keeping them out of the Middleware. Alternatively, you can also redirect them back to the Web UI home page.

While there are other solutions for increasing accessibility, such as accessing through a VPN, these can at times be unreliable. If you are a decentralized company, with remote employees all over the country, speeds over VPN can be less than ideal on many occasions. Obviously, there are certain risks to opening any resource to the internet. It’s important to consider the attack surface, and the associated risks. At EstesGroup, we isolate any resources open to the internet, and implement Antivirus, Firewalls, and Threat Protection for all endpoints. Along with that, oftentimes, Geofencing helps cut out a lot of noise on any resource open to the internet, to prevent overseas attackers using botnets.

Marshall Douglas, EstesGroup Systems Engineer

Have questions about Epicor P21 public web client access? Schedule a free consultation or ERP cloud solutions demo with the author now.

Epicor Prophet 21 Performance – Real-World Issues

by Brad Vandenbogaerde | Mar 8, 2023 | Cloud, Distribution, Epicor, Prophet 21, Software

Recently, I met with an Epicor Prophet 21 customer on a discovery call to review the issues they were encountering in relation to some ongoing P21 web UI slowdowns. ERP system performance is a common challenge across the ERP community, and in the Prophet 21 community, the subject of P21 performance is similarly of great importance. Coming out of the call, I thought I’d collect a few of the talking points and add a few additional P21 system performance considerations that can impact the speed and responsiveness of your Prophet 21 web UI.

Epicor Prophet 21 Performance Distribution Industry

Epicor Prophet 21 system performance can be a maze to navigate.

We had originally characterized the issue as a problem with the P21 API loading, and we began looking more broadly. As you might know, the Prophet 21 sits on top of Microsoft’s Internet Information Services web server platform, known colloquially as “IIS”. There are several things to consider if your P21 web server is slowing down throughout the day, and with an ERP system like P21, the issues actually affecting the performance of the Prophet 21 web interface may reside many layers below the P21 web server.

Background:

It might be helpful to initially review the composition and operation of websites. Websites are comprised of both static and dynamic pages. A static page is pre-defined on the web server and is ready to be served up. A dynamic page is generated at run time and may dynamically differ each time it is generated. In terms of HTML pages that comprise the P21 user interface, generally speaking, the P21 application pool can only respond to a certain number of requests at a time. If it is busy responding to requests for dynamic pages, then it may not have any threads left to serve the static pages. For this reason, a code problem on a dynamic page can create the illusion that the static pages are being served “slowly”. My point is, don’t rule out code or SQL. As an example, if you have 100 pages all hitting a database or API at the same time, and all 100 await a response, request 101 may be blocked until one of the first 100 requests completes.

Diagnosing the Degradation:

Beyond explicit issues like request load, there are plenty of things that you can do to help you diagnose performance problems with your Prophet 21 web application:

Load Profiles: What does your load profile look like normally? This makes a big difference – it may be that you always have an issue, but you can’t see the impact until your site receives load. You could try to test this (in staging) with something like JMeter.

Reviewing your logs: Does your application have logs? If not, you should consider adding some logging. If you already have logs, what do they say? Are there exceptions being thrown by your application? Is there something that is consistently failing?

IIS Logs: Enable IIS logs if you haven’t already. Reviewing your P21 IIS logs can help you see which requests are taking the longest. You can use something like Microsoft’s Log Parser to run SQL-like queries against your logs. You may even want to dump your logs into a SQL database if that makes your P21 logs easier to review. Once you know which pages are taking the longest, you can focus some of your attention on them.

Memory: How much memory is your application pool using? A memory leak is an obvious candidate but should be quite easy to see. Use Windows’ inbuilt Performance Monitor to track memory consumed by your application pool over the day and see if this increases as the day goes on.

SQL Performance: The performance of your P21 SQL database may be an underlying cause of poor Prophet 21 user interface performance. SQL server provides a series of query structures called Dynamic Management Views, or DMVs, that can provide details about server and database health and performance. These can be very helpful in diagnosing performance issues at this level. One common DMV, sys.dm_exec_requests, can help you understand query properties such as wait_type, wait_time, blocking_session_id and the total_elapsed_time.

P21 Application Pool Connections: Check how many connections your application pool has open – using something like Microsoft’s TCPView. Your application pool will try to re-use connections where possible, but you’ll probably see a lot of open connections to your application pool. One interesting thing you can see from this is how many connections you have open to your SQL database or any external APIs your application is using.

Use an Application Performance and Monitoring Tool: Performance monitoring tools, like AppDynamics, will be able to help pinpoint slow performing parts of your code. Unfortunately, there’s a little bit of a learning curve to be able to use these tools effectively, but they can be very powerful in helping to diagnose problems with your applications.

SQL Server AutoGrowth Property: Review the property in your SQL database pertaining to AutoGrowth. You may encounter issues if the following are occurring:

1. If the database is a super-busy database, transactionally speaking.

2. If AutoGrowth is enabled.

3. The AutoGrowth default is a smaller MB amount. This may cause random slowdowns on the database engine, which could impact the API application pool response time.

One thing to test would be to set that AutoGrowth size in MB to a very large number. That way, the AutoGrowth will only happen periodically.

Look for Memory Leaks: Once I had a customer experiencing IIS performance degradation issues with a custom web application we had built that was using asp.net and Crystal runtime integration. Ultimately, the issues with IIS and the web app related to memory leaks that were not obvious at all until we started doing some deep-dive testing. You will want to consider the possibility of internal memory leaks when building a support case against the application having performance-related issues that may or may not have been resolved in minor version changes. I know IIS also plays a part in this and how it manages internal garbage disposal with application pools, so this may be an area that you need to explore as well.

As you can see, Epicor Prophet 21 system performance can be a maze to navigate. To find your way through the P21 performance maze, there are many potential paths to take, and depending on the ultimate source of the problem, many might be dead ends. But in understanding the directions one might take in navigating the many potential Prophet 21 performance issues, P21 users can hopefully find themselves at the maze’s end – and moving on to bigger and better things.

Schedule Time With the Author, Brad Vandenbogaerde