Which to update first - the program or the computers?

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Posted on by Community Member Microsoft Employee

Hi Everyone, My store is currently running two POS stations and two back office computers with RMS 1.2 on Windows Xp. I need to update both the software and computers to be PCI compliant and wonder if anyone has a good feeling about which should be updated first? It seems to me the easiest would be to updated the program and then the computers. Will RMS 2.0 run effectively for at least a day or more while the transition of computers is made or is there a better way? Maybe setting up the new computers with 2.0 and then just shifting the database over to a whole new system!?

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mcons 390 on at

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RE: Which to update first - the program or the computers?

I would highly recommend setting up the new computers in a back room. You can use one of those as the temporary database server. Install the POS on those computers, backup your current database and restore to one of the new computers (that is being used as the temporary server). That database will be upgraded for use with RMS 2.

Once you have that done you need to take all peripherals from one of your registers and install any drivers/configurations to get them working. When those are all working you can plan a time to take down the other POS stations and replace with the new ones. You will most likely need to do a final database backup/restore on new/upgrade.

Make sure you thoroughly test everything the night before you go live.

Your MS Partner should be able to help you with this. If not contact me and I can help you.
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Community Member Microsoft Employee on at

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RE: Which to update first - the program or the computers?

Hello,

I believe you've answered it yourself.

Setting up two new computers while continuing to operate using your existing ones would be more practical. You cannot use the POS functionality "at all" in a live environment "until" the existing ones are de-activated as my presumption would be that you plan to use those POS licenses. I'd recommend you discuss it with a Microsoft Partner as Microsoft will not perform this service for you, the RMS application is not plug and play, all the peripherals and your EDC for credit cards may need to be all reconfigured and since it also involves your data. I wouldn't recommend anyone have an estimation that the process is simply snap and pop. The data by the way should reside on the third back office computer, regardless of what you do with the two POS machines. Offline databases should be on the two new POS machines.

If you only had a single computer putting the primary database on it would make sense. If you have two POS computers. Never imho.