[dba-Tech] re-acquiring network connectivity

[John R Bartow]

Hi Janet,
A few suggestions:
-I remember your original question and the solution you went with. Gustav already supplemented that idea - kudos to him.

The rest of my suggestions have to the KISS principal. IIRC Steve often refers to it ;-)

-In shop areas the power surges/brownouts are tremendous. Having a Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) as the power source for the PCs and network gear should certainly help. I support a machine shop where the UPS on the owner's computer logged almost 1700 engagements (supplementing brownout with battery power or preventing surges) in one year. At $70/UPS and replacing the battery every 3 years it is rather inexpensive. I support another office that has a special (orange) outlet for computers. Nice touch except that it is no more stable than the outlet right next to it. All the PCs there have UPS power sources now and the problems they were having have disappeared.

-Turn Windows Updates to manual. Many of them shouldn't be applied anyway. Unless there is some specific reason for these machines to be connected to the internet they shouldn't be.

-Rebooting the computers shouldn't be a problem with a steady power supply and timed reboots. Set them to reboot using the scheduler and only do it during non-working hours or at worst, between shifts.

-for sure the network wire should not be too close to possible interference sources. I'd try the UPS suggestion first. Relocating the network equipment would be much more of a hassle. Another possibility before rewiring may be isolation channeling for the wiring and isolation panels for the equipment.

Best of luck from the Sovereign State!
-----Original Message-----
From: dba-Tech [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Janet Erbach
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2016 10:51 AM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] re-acquiring network connectivity

Gustav -

I am the unfortunate developer who wrote this sweep app.  I say 'unfortunate' because I'm not sure I'm in a position where I can win with this.  Originally all the machines out on the shop floor were relying on a network connection in order to update the backend directly;  but as you said, GUARANTEED GLITCHES.  So at the advice of this forum, I rewrote the app so that each shop floor machine uploads a csv file of the data whenever there's a network connection, and created a 'sweep' app to pull all the data into the backend.  The floor machines are runninng just fine now as a result. But...

The 'sweep' machine needs babysitting ALL THE TIME.  If it's not a lost network connection,  it's windows updates firing off and re-booting the computer.  And then there's all the times I see the 'Microsoft Access has stopped responding..." error.

The machine already has a hard wired connection to the network, but it's right next to the shop floor.  Could EMF interference from the shop floor still be affecting it?  Could it be network 'brown outs'?  And is there any way to write, say, a powershell app that could do the babysitting for me?

Janet Erbach

On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 10:36 AM, Gustav Brock <gustav at cactus.dk> wrote:

> Hi Mike
>
> If it stops with a "Disk or Network error" your application is hosed.
>
> There is no workaround for this, so you will have to ask the "notwork guy"
> to fix the LAN (or rather the switches) for example by configuring 
> Quality-of-Service so at least some bandwidth will be left to service 
> your sweep PC.
>
> If the floor PCs are connected via WiFi, you are in trouble as it is 
> almost impossible to guarantee no glitches. However, with the most 
> modern Access Points from one of the top vendors you can come close.
>
> /gustav
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: dba-Tech [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] På vegne 
> af Zimmer, Michael
> Sendt: 21. marts 2016 15:16
> Til: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues < 
> dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>
> Emne: [dba-Tech] re-acquiring network connectivity
>
> Good morning all,
>
> I have a question for the community:
>
> Currently we (at work) are using a MS Access 2007 database as a 
> "sweep" PC which periodically collects data from 17 PCs running on the shop floor.
> This sweep PC is connected to the network via Ethernet, however, it 
> seems particularly vulnerable to the little network connectivity 
> "glitches" we experience here.
>
> For example, I came in today and sometime over the weekend there was a 
> momentary loss of network and the sweep database stopped collecting 
> and had to be manually re-started.  Now it is running its access VB 
> code and picking up 3000 records.
>
> Does anyone have a good way for a database to re-acquire the network 
> after a brief outage? This database needs to run unattended.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mike Zimmer
>
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