HELP A USER RE: Multistation Point of Sale Setup

QuickBooks Point of Sale : Basic 10.0

Hi Community Members!

We have a POS customer who is having tourble posting in community so I'll be the intermediary while we resolve that issue. What can you recommend?

Here's our setup:
Server + 4 workstations
Server: Intel E2200 (dual-core @ 2.2ghz), 3.25GB of memory, 7200 rpm hard drive, Windows Vista (32-bit), gigabit ethernet. Besides the QBPOS server, it also runs a small Apache/PHP/MySQL web stack used mostly for intranet SDK access to QBPOS.
I don't have immediate access to the size of the database, but our nightly backups are now 1.2GB, so we do have a lot of data…

So with that information, what kind of computer upgrade should we be looking at? I am in favor of going for a high speed quad core desktop computer with 6-8gb of memory, fast hard drive (RAID or maybe SSD if it’s in the budget) running windows 7 64-bit. My boss thinks that we should go enterprise and throw a dual Xenon processor (not dual core) computer with ~12gb of memory and some RAID hard drives, all running Windows Server 2008. We do not use a domain network or have any need for other Windows Server features at this time, so this computer would be dedicated to QuickBooks.

My questions:
Is there a happy medium between my proposed computer and what my boss was thinking that would work? Ie. Has anyone put together a multi-computer environment like ours and NOT run into performance problems (running POS 10 is a must)?
Can POS 10 even benefit from a multi-processor computer? I read one random post that said none of the QuickBooks products benefit from multi-processor computer, but I'd like to hear some confirmation of that since this would be my first attempt at building one. Can POS 10 (or the underlying database application) run natively in 64-bit to take advantage of the extra memory? I have only seen 32-bit versions so far.
I truly appreciate anyone that attempts to help with this.

Please help me improve my performance by answering a short survey that will be emailed to you from the community. http://community.intuit.com

Report Abuse

5 Replies

Banks42

Allstar

07/01/11 8:13pm PDT

Well, a ton of information. So some initial questions:

I don't have immediate access to the size of the database, but our nightly backups are now 1.2GB - POS company file only or total backup?
Are you now running QBPOS V10?
How many inventory items?
Are you using pictures?
Are you using QB2011 (Pro, enterprise)?

Your questions:

Can POS 10 even benefit from a multi-processor computer? - I don't know, but I will fijnd out?
Can POS 10 (or the underlying database application) run natively in 64-bit to take advantage of the extra memory? Under windows7, yes.

QuickBooks ISP
Constant Contact Business Partner
www.hightouchretailing.com
For more information see my profile.

Report Abuse

Banks42

Allstar

07/01/11 8:15pm PDT

Sorry, I forgot. Tell me more about your small Apache/PHP/MySQL web stack for intranet SDK access to QBPOS.

Report Abuse

brandonmus

New Member

07/05/11 8:02am PDT

Hey Banks, thanks for the reply. This is my question originally, so I'll be happy to answer anything that will help us find a good answer.

Total backup? I didn't know there were options. I went over and looked at the company data, and it appears to be about 1.14GB.
We are on QB v10 currently. We were a v4 store for the last couple years and just upgraded recently. Our performance problems have been much more apparent since we've upgraded.
We currently have 48k inventory items and it is ever growing. We sell clothing, so we create a lot of line items because of all the size / color combinations.
No pictures.
We are not.

On the same computer that is the QBPOS Server, we also have our WAMP stack (Windows Vista, Apache 2.2, MySQL 5.0 and PHP 5.2.4). We use it for everything from bulk creation of inventory items, to creating sales receipts, managing sales orders and creating purchase orders. We have spent a lot of time writing applications to allow us access to our QBPOS from basically any computer in our office and also making certain actions more efficient based on our company needs/workflow. We also use the MySQL database as temporary storage/cache when processing so that we don't have to constantly use the SDK (which can take seconds to return). All-in-all though, the web stuff is not intensive for the day-to-day applications.

If you have any other questions, let me know!