Thursday, 27 December 2007

SBS - QuickBooks 2008 - Problem with multi-user hosting setup

When installing QuickBooks 2008 with the intention of having multiple users access the same company file, you may receive the following error when opening QB and opening a company file located on a network share:

Problem with multi-user hosting setup

Problem
You are trying to work with a company file that is located on another computer, but that computer needs additional installation and setup. (H505)
In our case, the files are being hosted on the client's Small Business Server 2003 Premium box.

So, we need to run the QB setup disk on the server itself. Once we start the setup, accept the licensing agreement, we are greeted with:

Install QuickBooks Server 2008

Once the install has completed, we end up with a couple of new services on the server and an icon in the tray:

QuickBooks Services Icon - Far Left

Note the Simply Accounting 2008 server service is also running on this particular box.

Keep in mind for busy accounting offices whose SBS box is nearing its performance limits, these two server services may push the box over the edge when a number of company files are open at the same time.

We did run through the "Alternate Setup" process to configure the workstation as a host for the file and it seems to work okay. Users on a simply Internet Router setup may have issues with name resolution or changing IPs, but it will work. Note that any third party firewall software may interfere with connectivity too.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.
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3 comments:

  1. Kerry27 December, 2007 19:30

    If you did not install the client component on the server remember to download and run the QBwebpatch.exe on the server when ever updates are available (R3...).
    Then make sure the QuickBooksDB1x service is running when complete.

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  2. Anonymous27 December, 2007 20:45

    In a CPA firm that needs to open multiple years of QBs, try as much as you can 'not' to install that accounting software on the server.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Philip Elder Cluster MVP28 December, 2007 08:45

    Kerry - Thanks for the heads-up. We will be on the look out for updates as they come out.

    Anonymous - When we did our initial setup, QB did not seem to complain if accessing the file via a mapped network drive when the server did not have the TSR installed at that point.

    We will be monitoring CPU/Memory usage for the QB TSR on the server for sure. If it causes a lot of havoc, we would need to look at an alternative setup.

    Thanks for the comments folks!

    Philip

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