Should I get a server or high perf PC

[traumatt24]

In a small business, there are a total of 8 personal computers. Each can communicate via ethernet/router (with printer/file sharing, etc.) Each are running Windows XP 32. One computer has the database for a scheduling program that each computer accesses. Another computer has the database for a Microsoft Access billing program that each computer accesses. The databases are not large and do not take up a lot of hard drive space. Each computer constantly runs each program slow, except the host computers of that databases. I do not see a need to get a server as the databases do not take up much space. I am leaning towards adding another high performance PC that is either XP 64 or Win 7 64, to handle each database program. My goal is to speed up each program by adding a server/computer with a lot of RAM to carry the load of several computers accessing the databases.

 

[linkin]

Could it be that the hard drive is not fast enough to access the data for all the other networked PC's at once? What sort of machine is it? Server hardware or standard PC hardware? I'm not too familiar with access and networking, yet. If the databases are not large, consider getting a Solid State Drive for the host machine to store the databases. They are extremely fast, have near zero access times and come in various sizes (and price ranges).

 

[BlownFiveLiter]

I would build a server of some sort, even if you use non-server grade hardware. Something with multiple drives in either RAID1 or RAID5. The drives could definitely handle the throughput of multiple systems accessing them, but you should really have some sort of redundancy, since that's mission critical information for the business. A RAID5 setup, even with an on-board RAID should be able to support a lot of traffic. It might not be a bad idea to get the databases off of the main OS drive and onto the storage drives. RAID cards are cheap, and drives are decently priced, but even at current prices, they're cheaper than paying for data recovery if one fails with no redundancy.