[SOLVED] Peer To Peer Dedicated Database "Server"

[ozmiz]

Hello
I work for a small business startup on a tight budget, that is having to wait on a Server / Domain environment due to cost.
Everything is currently Peer-to-Peer, and we are outgrowing Excel Spreadsheets quickly for our data organizing.
Currently we are moving everything to MS Access from Excel.

My question is, could we take a workstation, dedicate it to just sharing files, mostly the MS Access database?
If so, what Windows version would we need? (64-bit Windows Pro perhaps??)
Also, what min processor and ram would you guys recommended?

Thanks for looking, and for any advice / guidance

 

[USAFRet]

With Access, the majority of the processing happens on the client.

How many users are you talking about?
How large will these Access DB's be?

And...not trying to be funny...please have someone competent build these Access DB's. There are multiple ways of doing this, and I've seen many, many incredibly bad implementations.

Seriously look into split db's.
The data tables live on the 'server', and the front end, queries, brain...lives in individual mdb's on each client.

 

[ozmiz]

With Access, the majority of the processing happens on the client.

How many users are you talking about?
How large will these Access DB's be?

And...not trying to be funny...please have someone competent build these Access DB's. There are multiple ways of doing this, and I've seen many, many incredibly bad implementations.

Seriously look into split db's.
The data tables live on the 'server', and the front end, queries, brain...lives in individual mdb's on each client.

All good questions..
There will be around 5 users that will update data, or enter data.
Around 9 will view / query the data

Not sure as to how large it will end up, but here are the needs
Track Equip we have rented, and where
Contacts (Sub-Contractors, Suppliers, Etc)
Track Jobs (Status, Project milestones of completion, materials needed for what days, etc)
Jobs Bid, tracking the stages of the bids, from bidding, to submitted, etc)

I'm sure there are a couple of other things I'm not thinking of at the moment, but that is the heart of the business.

I'm no expert, but me and another guy have some past coding experience, and have done some database work.
We are hoping we are up to the task.. (that budget is really tight. We are growing though).

We are going to do a split database.

 

[USAFRet]

If the front ends live on the client systems, and the actual data tables live on the 'server', you should be fine.

The 'server' can be pretty much any medium grade office PC.
Share the relevant folder where the back end table structure lives, map a drive letter to that from the clients, configure Access to look at that table MDB.
As said, all the brain lives and works on the clients.

 

[ozmiz]

If the front ends live on the client systems, and the actual data tables live on the 'server', you should be fine.

The 'server' can be pretty much any medium grade office PC.
Share the relevant folder where the back end table structure lives, map a drive letter to that from the clients, configure Access to look at that table MDB.
As said, all the brain lives and works on the clients.

Ok great.. that is good news, and eases my mind considerably.

And what about the Windows OS Version.. that will not be critical as well? (32, 64, Home or Pro for example)

 

[USAFRet]

64bit, Pro preferably.
i5 or higher, 16GB RAM