Securely Network two Windows XP Computers for Small Business, POS involved
March 28, 2006 11:52 AM   Subscribe

Help me help a friend's business getting his network and Microsoft Retail management system up and running.

A fairly straightforward set-up:

two Windows XP Pro machines
The Microsoft Retail Management System software

Just need the two computers to be connected, the back-office computer will host the database so I understand (from the RMS Guide) the firewall settings must be adjusted to connect to the server and database. We will use MSDE 2000 (or 2003?) whichever came with the RMS package.

Honestly, the biggest concern is networking the two computers and making sure the security is sufficient to operation a one POS computer/register. There will be two of us working on the task to have enough expertise to get it rolling, but we want to make sure we don't overlook anything. We are not doing anything with the merchant services aspect right now. We are doing this for free so know that your advice is not being capitalized.

Any input is appreciated as I will use this as a reference guide (one of a few). My email is in my profile.
posted by mic stand to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)
 
You won't like this advice, but (and it's kind of knocking me over with a feather to read that MS has a "retail management system") for all its flaws, the one thing MS does incredibly well is documentation. Just looking at the MSRMS site, I see that there are support sections and newsgroups, and it even looks like you can get access to special support sections as a customer of RMS.

I think your question is fairly open ended in terms of "networking the computers and making sure the security is sufficient", so it'll be hard for anyone here to troubleshoot something specific. You should work through the included documentation, and you'll probably find most of your questions of setup answered there. I'm betting that this RMS is really just some software on a PC with proprietary attached devices, networked as you say to a dedicated data system in a locked backroom. If you were further along, and had a specific problem to deal with (Ex: "how do I configure this router to allow these ports that RMS says I need?) that might be different.

The included docs, and RMS site should tell you most of what you need; it doesn't sound like you are breaking the mold so you probably are building the prototypical MS-RMS small business system, which I imagine is one of the samples in the docs included or online. I've seen versions of these now that I think of it- touchscreen LCD with GUI interface, black box underneath with cash register, etc.- and they're probably pretty straightforward to set up on the whole. Otherwise, why wouldn't this be pretty much a generic "network 3 computers on a simple router in the backroom"? The principal security would be physical security, because other than a phone line or something similar to run CC checks, the system will be locked away as a simple 3-node network running some low-grade Windows spinoff with almost no capabilities besides a "register" interface, and that more than any software tweaking is going to be secure.
posted by hincandenza at 1:30 PM on March 28, 2006


Response by poster: fair enough and you're right, I just wanted to see if anything popped out in the minds of askme users.
posted by mic stand at 4:40 PM on March 28, 2006


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