Hi Rob,
Rob Kampen wrote:
Hi, I too run quickbooks (2007) and offer the following scenario - 5
user licences (actually 2 times three user package were purchased).
Previously I used version 2004 and this allows much better sharing of
the data file, unfortunately I got sucked into an upgrade that in
reality was a significant downgrade!!
Yeah I know exactly what you mean. We are currently on 2005 Pro and got
"sucked into" upgrading from 2003 Pro, which was working fine for us;
but 2005 did have a couple of features we liked the sound of. Little did
we know that 2005 was a zillion times slower than 2003 (in our
experience) and once you convert your data file and work with it for a
week or so, adding information, there is no way back and the data you've
added since is too precious to loose, that you can't afford to revert to
a week old backup. If only the files were version independent.
You too, sounds exactly like what happened to me.
Anyway - my set-up:-/
For multiple simultaneous users, one machine has to be the defacto
"server", i.e. it opens the file and shares access to the underlying
data store on behalf of other users. (why they can't develop a decent
client server product defies understanding).
I've always been annoyed by this too, as it has never really been made
into a proper networkable application. They also say that the company
file should never reach to a size greater than 125MB. Ha! no chance.
So what I have done is establish a W2K client running in virtualbox
(thanks to Sun for keeping this product FOSS). This client accesses the
data file from my main server (running a HW based raid 5 disk array). I
have lots of ram on my virtual box client, and allocate sufficient to
ensure all is in ram. Thus far the system has been very robust and no
data loss. I keep this client running in share mode 24x7 and only go
single user to create backups. Unfortunately Quickbooks does not provide
an automated method of backing up (another gross over-sight).
I can't really see the benefit in this, samba shares the company file
just as well as Windows as long as you configure the permissions
correctly and set oplock settings in smb.conf
That said, I have read, when spending endless hours googling for tips on
running QB from a server, that it can be best to serve it from a Windows
box and intuit only supports that method.
All the other users (on Windoze XP at this time) access the virtualbox
W2K for the data file.
Performance while not stellar is adequate, my file is only 10% the size
of yours, but it runs basically from ram, and only save writes....
Apparently Quickbooks do offer more expensive products that may work
better from a client server perspective but only on Windoze and MAC, but
for my small business the cost is WAY TOO HIGH and I love FOSS and Linux.
I think the performance difference would be far worse in this
configuration with the size of our file.
I must say, it took me many dozens of hours to get this working properly
(mostly due to my ignorance, and Quickbooks poor design), so I hope this
may assist you.
Thanks for your reply Rob.
It's a shame that there are these issues, as it's an excellent program
and suit's our needs perfectly in every other way than that mentioned.
And like you, I'd rather use FOSS and GNU/Linux. And that's not through
cost, but through choice!
Stewart
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I too used the samba share method with QB2004 as this allowed any of
the machines to access the file in multi-user mode, what's more I could
do automatic back-ups of the samba file system each night and have a
working backup. 