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I've recently been appointed general manager of a small business that specializes in rental and servicing of golf carts (not really relevant). We use two programs, both created with Microsoft access and stored (along with all of their relevant data) on a ~20TB qnap NAS. The way we are accessing this software is with various windows XP terminals scattered throughout the showroom and shop areas, which use remote desktop connection to connect to virtual machines running access runtime 2013 on an equally old server, with the various qnap shares mounted as drives S, T, U, & V.
My question is, am I going to see any benefit by continuing to use virtual machines, or can I simply upgrade the terminals to newer thin clients, install the access runtime on them and then mount the drives to each system, completely removing the physical server from the equation. That is the only purpose that is currently served by the server, and getting rid of it would greatly reduce the amount of noise in the manager's office / breakroom.
I'm fairly new to most of this stuff, save for some basic knowledge of how things work and how we currently have the office set up, so any input would be greatly appreciated.
Gabe
Posted 2017-05-21T19:44:18.667
Reputation: 11
An advantage of the current scheme is a single point to manage/secure the app. Anything installed on a bunch of machines may need to be configured/reconfigured/secured on a bunch of machines and that can be difficult. But if the configuration is stable, maybe not a big deal. – Stephen Rauch – 2017-05-21T20:06:22.060
The biggest pro in the current configuration is how easily it can be managed from a single location, including backups and reinstallation. Virtualisation doesn't always work, but in your case it does, and I would definitely continue to keep using it. A thin client can simply be replaced, and its configuration is quickly. A user would have very little down time, whereas with a rich client (which is basically what you're suggesting) downtime would be 4 times as much if not more. – LPChip – 2017-05-21T20:20:18.787