[WheresTheDog]

I had sort of asked this question in another post about the dongle, but haven't heard anything back. So there are several questions here:

In the future when we grow to multiple workstations (and hopefully multiple stores). We'll have a machine acting as the RetailEdge server and the clients.

What if by chance the dongle for the server goes bad. Can a dongle for a client machine be used as a substitute on the sever machine until a replacement is made?

That begs another question. If the server goes down are the client machines offline until the server is back up? Can a client take over as the server? Can a client perform work "offline" until the server is back up, then sync with the server?

[RetailEdge Moderator]

You might already know this but for other readers of the forum:
The dongle required to run the RetailEdge client. When you install the program you will be asked to install the client/server or client only. When you choose to run the client/server, RetailEge will install the dataserver as a Windows service which will run whenever the computer is turned on. It sits on your computer waiting for data requests from the client. When a data request is made the dataserver processes the request and then responds with the appropriate information.

The application that you see when you run the program (retailedge.exe), is the client. When you install the client/server on a workstation, RetailEdge is setup to talk to the dataserver locally. You can see this in Tools|Settings|Server Connection. The program is setup to talk to the local IP 127.0.0.1. This is an IP address that is available on every computer and is sometimes referred to as the local loopback IP.

When the RetailEdge client (retailedge.exe) starts up, it will check the available USB ports for the dongle. If if finds it, it will run normally. If it does not it will run in Demo mode. Demo mode is a read only mode which does not allow you to post any data.

So to answer your question, a client dongle will work on any machine. So if one goes bad, you can move one over from another machine and have that machine work in normal mode. It is pretty common for people to be running RetailEdge on more workstations than they have dongles for. We have customers who will move dongles to laptops to take data home, or to a trade show or just to do a "trunk show" on a disconnected computer. Or they have a second register that they use just during high traffic times. So they have a second dongle that they use for a back-office machine but during the high traffic times, they move it over to the second register.

Your question about the server machine going down is a good one. If the server goes down or if a network connection to the server machine gets broken, then the clients on the other machines won't be able to hit the server's IP address and so won't be able to get any data. The network disconnect issue is typically why we recommend that the main register be the dataserver machine. So if the network breaks at least you can still ring in sales and run your business until the network is back up and running.

The server machine going down is another issue. If a server machine goes down, then obviously no machines will be able to run because they won't have access to the data and won't be able to process any data. Depending on your situation you can:

1. Get a RAID drive or your server machine. Some people find this is the best solution. So if your server machines drive goes down, then you just switch a cable and you are up and running. Obviously if the motherboard fries, this is not going to take care of the problem for you.

2. When you install RetailEdge, install it as a client/server on All machines. Then if the real server machine fries, you can take a backup (you should be making backups everyday), and restore it into another machine, have this machine point to itself (127.0.0.1), and you are up and running. Obviously, you will only have data from when you did the last backup and so you may have to key in some sales that were made between the time the backup was made and the server machine went down. Then when your server machine is backup, make a backup of the temporary server's machine and restore it into the new servers's data. Then have all the clients point back to the original server's IP.

Installing RetailEdge as a client/server on all machines can lead to confusion. People can get confused about where the "real" data is located, so we don't recommend this as a solution for everyone.

Also, even though RetailEdge does not "synchronize" the data during a disconnect, we do have export and import capability (REDI Files). So the sales that were made at disconnected registers (if for instance the network flaked), could exported out of the disconnected machines and imported back into the main server. There are limitations on this type of import/export especially for sales so take a look at the documentation to see what limits there are on this type of operation. However, at the same time it is pretty sophisticated and will import new customers and inventory created during a sale with the sales records.

This import/export capability is also used for people who want to work on inventory or customer databases at home and then import the changes into the store or for people who create POs for their vendors at trade shows and want to bring the new POs, with the new items and/or vendors into their data at the store.

I had sort of asked this question in another post about the dongle, but haven't heard anything back. So there are several questions here:

In the future when we grow to multiple workstations (and hopefully multiple stores). We'll have a machine acting as the RetailEdge server and the clients.

What if by chance the dongle for the server goes bad. Can a dongle for a client machine be used as a substitute on the sever machine until a replacement is made?

That begs another question. If the server goes down are the client machines offline until the server is back up? Can a client take over as the server? Can a client perform work "offline" until the server is back up, then sync with the server?