After an outage yesterday, I am trying to streamline and simplify the St Felix
QB setup to make it more reliable and easier to administer.
The most critical factor that influences the overall design is the realistic
maximum number of simultaneous users.
If we can live with a maximum of two users logged on at any one time, I can
simplify the system dramatically, which will streamline operations and improve
reliability.
If we need to have more than two users logged at any time, then we need the
current setup, with its various woes. The problem are not insurmountable, but
the system is more complex. FWIW, a quick check looks like Shan has been the
only active user for the past couple of months, but I may be wrong.
Either way, I need to overhaul some parts of the current setup, which was
thrown together in an enormous rush. Once I know what parts we are going to
follow, I will make appropriate plans and let everyone know.
Yesterday’s problems were caused by the combination of Techsoup and Microsoft.
Licenses that I ordered and paid for were not delivered correctly, leading to
the QB server shutting down at an inopportune time. After restoring the
server, reverting to trial licenses, I spoke to MS tech support, who suggested
that we start all over again purchasing the TS licenses. They also suggested
that we just buy them directly from MS at full retail price, which is not much
more that the Techsoup price.
Right now, we should be good for a couple of months, but I want to prevent any
similar issues in future, and even the regular jumping-through-hoops that I
have been doing up until now to keen the current system running.
The first issue to resolving this and improving long-term reliability, is to
decide how many simultaneous users we realistically need. The rest will flow
from that.
Regards
paul
