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Thread: Moving to Revit server due to performance issues/SMB

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    Default Moving to Revit server due to performance issues/SMB

    Full disclosure - I am not a Revit/AutoCAD user. I have a client with <50 AutoCAD and Revit users; probably <10 of the users are Revit users.

    We have struggled with performance issues any time users were in the same model. Currently, all files are located on a file server and users access them this way. Server is 2008 R2, and most users are still on Windows 7. We've worked with Autodesk support, but never got anywhere. Always blamed the network; we followed all of their recommendations and never got anywhere.

    It was suggested to us some time ago to install Revit server. When we discussed with our Autodesk support individual, they told us no - that is only for companies with multiple locations. More recently, I've found a number of posts online that suggested users in a similar situation to us setup a Revit server locally so they didn't have to deal with SMB issues. That seemed to do the trick for them.

    So our next step is to setup a local Revit server. Where we're stuck on the details is it seems we'll be removing the Revit files from the file server, and that's an issue in terms of archival for the client. Right now, their file server is laid out with one folder per project; when that project is completed, it is archived. If we remove the Revit files and put them on the central server, we're breaking that model. Is there a way, when the Revit project is completed, to bring that Revit file back out of the central server and put it back in the project folder on the file server for proper archival?

    Any help is greatly appreciated!

  2. #2
    Super Moderator david_peterson's Avatar
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    Default Re: Moving to Revit server due to performance issues/SMB

    How many users are in a model at one time?
    How fast is your network switch?
    What version of Revit are you running?
    Server Performance?
    I work in a larger, multi office firm and we ditched Revit server a long time ago as it cause nothing but problems and harsh workaround to upload and download files to it.
    Basically we bought a bunch of hardware, spent a ton of time and at the end of the day still had issues.
    We switched to using Remote Desktop connection for our remote users. They VPN into a workstation in the office where the model resides and just work off that server. Ended up being faster. We've now switched from using that to just going to BIM360 for most of our projects where we have people from multiple offices working on it. There's another firm in town that recently removed all their file servers and have fully gone to cloud based solutions and virtual desktops.

    Point is, I'd also be looking to upgrade the infrastructure before I'd go to Revit Server.

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    Default Re: Moving to Revit server due to performance issues/SMB

    David,

    Thanks for the reply. We've already thrown a fair amount of hardware at this issue.

    All users are in the same physical office, on the same physical network. About 50 users share the network in total, but I believe less than 10 use Revit. Most I've ever heard is 3 users in a model at once. I've had complaints that even 1 user occasionally has issues, but this seems rare.

    All network equipment is gigabit from the desktop to the server.

    Server was just replaced as part of this problem. It is a virtual server and hosts other resources, but perfmon shows the box is sitting doing nothing at this point. Drives are in a RAID 10 array, 15k SAS drives. Dual Xeon Gold processors, 14 cores each. 130GB of RAM on the virtual box; 12GB of RAM assigned to the file server hosting the Revit models and only 7 in use.

    Desktops are all i7 with dedicated video cards (at least 2GB on the video card) and 32GB of RAM in the box. All SSDs. We keep the video card drivers pretty up-to-date.

    Started on Revit 2015 (15.0.1259.0) and slowly moving to 2018 (18.3.1.2.) We've been through various patches to see if any would help and nothing there.

    Certainly open to cloud solutions as well if there's something that works!

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    Default Re: Moving to Revit server due to performance issues/SMB

    This thread is a few months old now, but thought I would reply just in case it helps.
    Cloud solutions are really best if you need to collaborate with others outside of your office. Moving to BIM360 means more licenses and more internet bandwidth needed.
    We have found that it works well for us when we are working with others, but for projects that are completely in-house, the file server just makes more sense. For us it is faster.
    Your initial post mentioned Server 2008 R2...hopefully that has been replaced as it is old and will be out of extended support soon.
    Just based on the specs you posted, I don't see anything glaringly obvious...but then you would have fixed it if there was something obvious. You might want to check the disk access on the server. With VMs, that can sometimes be the bottleneck.

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