Alternative Solution to an Office Server

SSST

Morning,

At the minute we have one computer that everyone (13 Users) connects to for all data, files etc. We use one database for our accounts software, this is now starting to cause speed issues as the computer is just a stand alone system and is struggling to share the database quickly enough when we are all trying to access it..

I have spoken to reps about servers, but the investment (although a very good one) just isn't in our budget yet.

I was wondering if a decent NAS hardware would be a good option?

We all all running windows 7, and need something that is easy to set-up in house and will be able to share data with multiple users at the same time without breaking a sweat.

Thank you

SSST

andydiysaver

NAS uses RAID which you can do yourself if money is tight, 250 gig serves my organisation of 300+ as long as the backup faculty is there, so is option with several of the 250 gig drives kicking around ebay - or if more speed is needed get some SSD's and stripe them up, but if you take this option back it up back it up back it up.. its your blazing speed solution but when they go, they go!


edit - if the server drive is an old one using spindle drive, just an SSD in itself will provide a massive upgrade, keep accessable files there on it only and as above back it up as much as possible - pay for quality and stick trim on . ...

bluesnake

have you done some maitenance on the tables and got rid of the blank entries and crud.

you havent given us the spec of your current server, yet you are asking about extra storage

victor2

What would the cost be to the organisation if all 13 users lose access to their data, either for a matter of days or permanently? It won't be permanent of course, because you do have regular backups.
Put a figure on that and maybe a properly configured server and backup won't seem so expensive.

securityguy

NAS is unlikely to solve your database performance problems

You can't just shove a database on a NAS and then run the database software on all the other machines: you will, fairly rapidly, corrupt the database. And having the NAS hardware host the database tables and serve them up to one machine which runs the database product will work, but is unlikely in small environments to make much difference.

You need some decent server hardware, or to look at moving the data into some sort of cloud platform.

prowla

A NAS is just like a disk, but it won't host the application.
It should do fine for file sharing though.
So you could potentially shift the fileshares onto it and leave your existing server just hosting the database application.

chunter

type of database? sql? ms access?

System

Has the database been written for multi-user use or is it just an overgrown Access database