Hardware Requirements for ERP software
When organisations are budgeting for a new ERP software, one may miss out on budgeting for hardware. ERP software is not a simple software. An ERP software is resource intensive in terms of processor, RAM and hard disk requirement. You would not want to compromise on your ERP software performance because you missed out budgeting proper hardware for your ERP software.
So how many servers do you need to run your ERP software? For this blog entry, I will explain why two servers is the popular architecture to run your ERP software in a SME organisation.
Application and Database Server
An ERP software requires two middleware server- Application and Database to run. Application server is used to run the ERP software, whereas Database server is used to store data of your ERP software.
To use your ERP software, separating database and application into two servers is widely adopted in the market. ERP software: Purpose of having two separate servers Security For companies with multiple sites and entities, your users can access your centralised ERP software through web-based technology such as provided by TaskHub ERP software. By separating application and database server for your ERP software, only the application server is opened for external users access. For companies with mobile users, users may want to access your ERP software outside office through the internet. Thus you are able to allow external access to your application server, but keep your database server within internal access only. Therefore, you are able to keep your critical data in the ERP software secure, while allowing mobile users from multiple locations to access your ERP software.
Minimising Downtime
Another key reason for separating your database and application server for your ERP software is risk mitigation. If the application server fails, our system engineer can install the application software in the working database server and vice versa, so your ERP software can be up and running within a few hours. If both application and database is in one server and that sever fails, your ERP software downtme would be much longer. Especially for mission critical ERP software, minimising downtime should be one factor in considering how much to budget for hardware for your ERP software.
There are also many other reasons why many supports this popular architecture for their ERP software, such as the ability to have more CPUs, ability to have different Operating System for various servers etc.
Is merging application and database into one server possible for your ERP software?
Merging application and database in one server is possible. However, ensuring optimal performance of your ERP software may require you to have a high end server, which may cost higher than two normal servers.
What are the other hardware costs and why do you need them for your ERP software?
Other basic hardware components recommended for your ERP software are data backup, UPS, antivirus, firewall. We have touched on the various backup technologies for your ERP software in our previous blog entry. Stay tuned for our subsequent entries where we will share with you more on ensuring performance and security of your ERP software.
