ACE Microtechnology, Inc. Achieves a Microsoft Silver Messaging Competency and Cloud Accelerate

         

For Release July 19, 2012

ACE Microtechnology, Inc. Achieves a Microsoft Silver Messaging Competency and Cloud Accelerate

ACE Microtechnology, Inc. earns distinction through demonstrated technology success and customer commitment.

Atlanta, GA — July, 19th, 2012 — ACE Microtechnology, Microsoft Dynamics GP, CRM and SharePoint Consulting Partner, today announced it has achieved a Silver Messaging and Cloud Accelerate competency, demonstrating its ability to meet Microsoft Corp. customers’ evolving needs in today’s dynamic business environment. To earn a Microsoft silver competency, partners must successfully demonstrate expertise through rigorous exams, culminating in Microsoft certifications. And to ensure the highest quality of services, Microsoft requires customer references for successful implementation and customer satisfaction.

As clients prepare their companies for Cloud Computing, ACE consultants are competent and ready to assist with this fast growing transition.  Many of ACE clients have already migrated portions of their IT infrastructure to the cloud and have plans to migrate more applications in the next 12 months.  ACE can offer the full Microsoft Stack in a cost effective price point that clients are looking for.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365 migrations to the cloud are outpacing any other initiatives from our clients.

 “This Microsoft Silver Messaging competency showcases our expertise in today’s technology market and demonstrates our knowledge of Microsoft and its products,” said Susan Looby, President. “Our plan is to accelerate our customers’ success by serving as technology advisors for their business demands.”

“By achieving a silver competency, organizations have proven their expertise in specific technology areas, placing them among the top 5 percent of Microsoft partners worldwide,” said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft Corp. “When customers look for an IT partner to meet their business challenges, choosing a company that has attained Microsoft competencies is a smart move. These are highly qualified professionals with access to Microsoft technical support and product teams.”

 The Microsoft Partner Network helps partners strengthen their capabilities to showcase leadership in the marketplace on the latest technology, to better serve customers and, with 640,000 Microsoft partners in their ecosystem, to easily connect with one of the most active, diverse networks in the world.

For more information, press only:

Bruce Moore, ACE Microtechnology, Inc. bmoore@acemicrotech.com

ACE Rated by Microsoft as Top VAR at Worldwide Partner Conference 2012

ACE Rated by Microsoft as Top VAR at Worldwide Partner Conference 2012! Thanks go to all our great clients and our internal team at ACE!

"We are truly honored by this and grateful for our strong Microsoft Partnership" said Susan Looby, President of ACE Microtechnology, Inc.

ACEConnect Interation Templates for Dynamics GP

GP 2010 Security Report

I received a request from a client who needed to supply a GP User Security Report to their auditors. Prior to GP version 10, we were at the mercy of the GP Report Writer report that was typically several thousands to several tens of thousands of pages long. We would usually modify the report to print one line per record to save space and so that it was easily exported, but even that produced a very large file. Now with the new Role-based Security in GP 10 and 2010, we have access to this data in SQL. I developed the script below and thought that others in the GP community might find it useful. It provides a nice, simple view of the user security in GP. It does not drill down to the specific window level, but it has every user, the companies they access, the roles they are assigned to in each company and the task and task descriptions within each role. Pretty sweet. I hope you guys can use it someday.

The script:

Use dynamics

select rol.userid, cmp.interid, rol.securityroleid, tsk.securitytaskid, td.securitytaskname, td.securitytaskdesc

from SY10500 rol

inner join SY01500 cmp on rol.cmpanyid=cmp.cmpanyid

inner join SY10600 tsk on rol.securityroleid=tsk.securityroleid

inner join SY09000 td on tsk.securitytaskid=td.securitytaskid

order by rol.userid, cmp.interid, rol.securityroleid, tsk.securitytaskid

A sample result set:




Tonya Boyce

ACE Microtechnology, Inc.

www.acemicrotech.com

tboyce@acemicrotech.com

ACE Microsoft Dynamics GP SQL Installation and Configuration Audit

Microsoft Dynamics GP runs on the Microsoft SQL Server database which is a scalable platform that can run a high transaction volume with little support. SQL enables you to do query, search, synchronize, report, and analyze your data easily and effectively.

Having your business data in SQL Server ensures that you have the latest advances in data integrity, performance, and manageability. You can take advantage of SQL Reporting Services to create Web-enabled reports, use integration tools like ACE eConnect templates to communicate seamlessly with other database applications, and restore your company database to a specific point in time with SQL Server’s backup and restore functionality.
However, even Microsoft SQL is not maintenance-free. Here are some common items ACE can recommend or assist you with in maintaining a stable and well performing Dynamics GP system.

Schedule regular database maintenance. As databases grow, it is important to allow SQL to re-tune the database for optimal performance. All the tools you need to do this are part of a SQL database maintenance plan. How often it needs to run depends on your environment, but generally weekly maintenance runs are sufficient. Be sure your maintenance plan includes tasks to check integrity, rebuild indexes, reorganize indexes, and update statistics.
Determine your server performance baseline. Shortages in memory, disk, or CPU can all cause major performance problems. Windows Server comes with everything you need to monitor a server out of the box. Check out Windows Performance Monitor and its scheduling capabilities to get a clear view of what’s happening on your server. Often times major bottlenecks can be simply rectified, such as dropping in some additional memory in a RAM starved server.
Select the right RAID level for the job. RAID comes in many flavors and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Raid 5 is popular because it is usually the most economical since you lose only one drive worth of space in your array for the parity data. However, it usually has the slowest write performance of just about any type of RAID. Selecting RAID levels with good write performance like RAID 1 and RAID 10 can provide better performance. Avoid RAID 0 as it does not provide any fault tolerance.

Understand the difference between simple and full recovery model in SQL. SQL writes all changes to the database to the transaction log. In simple recovery mode, this transaction log is automatically truncated periodically. In full recovery, it is your responsibility to manually truncate the transaction log, usually by performing a transaction log backup. The benefit of full recovery mode is that you can restore to an individual point in time, not just to the time you perform a full backup. If you have problems with your transaction log growing constantly, and you are not concerned with point in time recovery, choose simple recovery mode.

Do not locate transaction logs and database files on the same physical drive. Many know you should place database and log files on separate drives. The science behind this is that SQL must write to both files at the same time when transactions are applied to the database. Putting the files on separate physical disks allows these activities to happen in parallel. And consider that a single physical drive or array partitioned as two drives may not provide the security of two separate drives.

Use correct auto-growth and auto-shrink settings. It’s important to understand that SQL files can be logically and physically fragmented. Frequent shrink and growth commands executed on the database will cause fragmentation of the database files. It is better to set the size of the files to a reasonable size right away, thereby reserving a contiguous area of disk platter. This way, the logical amount of data inside the files can grow and shrink without having to alter the physical size of the database.

Don’t assume a flat file backup is sufficient for recovery purposes. The maintenance plan wizard in SQL management studio may be sufficient for many applications, but it may not provide the same type of comprehensive reporting and monitoring you would get from a centralized backup with a commercial utility. To back up a SQL database properly, you should strongly consider using commercial backup utility which is SQL aware. At a minimum, both an on-site and off-site backup strategy should be implemented.

Properly back up the transaction log. Fortunately, a full backup will not to truncate the transaction log. This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of using SQL, even among database administrators. SQL does not truncate the transaction log when performing a full backup. Doing so would break your transaction log chain and remove your ability to do point in time restore, which is a central point of the full recovery model. If you are unsure, just switch to simple mode and take full backups. This way SQL will manage the transaction log automatically.

Microsoft SQL Server does have the ability to recover from problems. Built into the application are several data recovery and data protection mechanisms designed to protect your business data in the event of hard drive or server failure. SQL Server stores all information and changes in the transaction log, which allows you to backup and restore it to any point in time, not just the time you last took a backup.

Microsoft SQL provides a powerful, yet flexible framework to store and access your business data. Unfortunately many companies purchase the software, install it and never look at the server again until it runs out of space or they realize that they need to restore to a backup and there isn't one because the backup plan is no longer running.

Protect your investment.
ACE can assist with one-time or ongoing preventative maintenance of your SQL Server. Initially, we will complete a Microsoft Dynamics GP SQL Installation and Configuration Audit where you will come away with a comprehensive document of your current installation and configuration as well as recommendations to become complaint with Microsoft recommendations. From there we can set up a schedule that makes sense for your organization to review your server and complete preventative maintenance procedures to protect against data corruption and ensure that backups are running properly and are reliable. Take the first step toward protecting and maintaining your software investment today and engage with us for an audit of your GP and SQL Installation.