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Baan Configuring Fun!

After seeing several FUBAR Baan installations I have strong recommendations about the basic configuration and architecture of the Baan software setup.

First, no matter what the blowhard consultants say from whatever big six accounting firm or Arthur-android or Baan or whoever, the best way to install Baan is NOT to put multiple installs of the application mixed with the database server on several hosts. It is too difficult to keep the Baan applications in sync with the many, many patches installed each week. There are methods to do this but most companies will not do them.

The best configurations for a company that has at least 50 users is to have a Baan applications server and a SEPARATE database server for smaller machine capacities or combine the Baan application server and the database server on a large SMP machine with many resources (many CPU and _much_ RAM.) On small capacity hosts Baan processes suck all the resource out of a machine leaving nothing for the database. On larger hosts resources can be managed better and scale better. The main point is multiple Baan application servers are very difficult to manage without highly paid and well organized system admin staff. If you have two smaller servers don't believe any hoodoo about installing part of Baan on the DB server for performance. For a 30% performance gain on a few batch jobs the integrity of the data is at risk. Nothing like running two different versions of inventory to make life much worse at a faster pace. (see how integrity is maintained in most ERP) So, KEEP IT SEPARATE. Just have the latest fastest NIC links between the servers. (At this time dual 100MB ethernet is only OK).

Don't install the Triton database of Baan if you are going to install a real database (Informix, Oracle). Install the real database right away. Be a man. Take responsibility now, save work for yourself later.