Hey everyone! I'm seeking some advice on addressing performance degradation issues with POS workstations in hotels throughout Belgium. Specifically, I'm dealing with slow performance and crashes in our PMS application, and I wonder how others manage these challenges, particularly when requirements mandate 'Blackboxes' for fiscalisation.
Some issues we've noticed include:
- Terminals slow down during busy periods, but not all at once.
- POS responds slowly when opening tables.
- Systems load all open tickets into memory, leading to freezes with a gray background.
- Occasional random freezing.
Despite having certified and optimized hardware for our PMS application, performance improves temporarily after a restart but degrades again over time.
Do you have any strategies to minimize performance issues during peak hours? For example, have you implemented scheduled reboots before busy times?
Additionally, how do you guide hotel staff on practices such as timely table closure post-payment, auto-closing completed tickets, or limiting active tables per outlet?
Just to clarify, we don't use Opera; our PMS is a third-party developed application.
Here's what we've already done to try and improve performance:
1. Keep firmware and drivers up to date.
2. Ensure Windows updates are current (applied outside of business hours).
3. Run Trend Micro analyses out of hours and have it disabled during business hours.
4. Uninstall unnecessary applications.
5. Configure the pagefile dynamically according to needs.
Even with all these measures, we still experience performance drops. I'm planning to run performance counters on the Windows POS workstations and utilize Sysinternals to look for memory leaks.
Any additional suggestions? Thanks in advance!
4 Answers
Just to clarify, is your PMS or your POS system slowing down? Most modern PMS systems are web-based, so at the very least, ensure you're running on updated browsers like Chrome or Edge. Our setup is pretty recent, using 10th gen i5 processors with lots of RAM, and NVMe for storage, which helps performance a lot. Make sure your hardware spec is sufficient!
You mentioned if it's cloud-based or hosted locally? I’ve supported on-prem Opera for 15 years and the support can be quite a hassle. Have you checked with their support team?
We're using a hosted solution, and I plan to ask them about the performance issues.
There might be serious memory leaks in your application. I’d strongly recommend contacting your software provider to investigate potential issues. They should be able to help with any memory management problems that arise.
First off, if your software or hardware is from an external vendor, definitely give them a call. It sounds like there could be some issues with how the software is integrated. Hotels don’t have the luxury of frequent downtime, and relying on staff to handle workarounds can lead to complications. You need a robust solution!
I totally agree. Having reliable support from your software provider is essential in a hotel environment!
Thanks for the input! I’ll make sure to reach out to the vendor.
Thanks for clarifying! I’ll double-check our hardware specs and see if anything needs an upgrade.