Some users do not have the time, technical skills or knowledge to install, set up and run rapport on their local network but, may wish to have a local server rather than the system online in the cloud.
Of course both are entirely possible and each has pros and cons depending on what the needs are, which we are more than happy to offer advice on to get to a solution that suits your needs.
Where you wish a dedicated hardware solution there are almost endless options given that rapport can run on virtually any machine, any operating system so the choice can be daunting if you are not a bit of a geek, like we are.
We offer a service to build and set up your rapport installation so all you need to do, is plug it in and go.
Here we are offering some simple and brand advice that will suit most people using rapport and what we use for running rapport when it comes to maintenance and repair companies.
Apple Products
Ideally, a dedicated Mac Mini with a Time Capsule.
The reasons that we strongly recommend this solution for many repair and maintenance companies is that the Mac Mini (especially with a solid state drive in it) is an incredibly reliable machine that is highly unlikely to break.
Couple that to a Time Capsule and for not a lot of money you have a fully backed up local solution that is robust and reliable. But not only that recovery in the event of anything going wrong is extremely easy minimising any potential downtime as the Time Capsule backup runs every hour automatically in the background.
In our experience, they just work and it’s as close to “plug and play” as you can get.
Mini PC
The next tier if you like is a mini PC running either Windows or Linux based OS.
This is cheaper than using Apple products however in our opinion it is not quite as robust and backup is harder to accomplish with the same ease and regularity.
Aside from being cheaper however this solution allows you to fully configure just exactly what you want, how you want it to work and what components that are used. This means you can tailor these things precisely to your needs.
In our office we run an installation on a small HP server that is, in effect a mini PC, with Windows on it. By default these machines come with a simple RAID card that allows us to “mirror” the main hard drive which we would recommend strongly if you do not use solid state drives and an external backup in addition.
The biggest issue that you are likely to face is the failure of a hard drive as, mechanical drives will all fail eventually even although most will run for many years without issue and why a backup for that is essential with business critical software.
Full Server
You can of course also use a full server solution, a rack mounted PC that is designed to deal with high loads and these are robust with enterprise class components designed for high levels of use.
Fro almost all repair companies this is not necessary. In fact we would generally say that it was a waste of money in many ways for most maintenance companies.
Such a solution is more suited to a full commercial environment where there are many users and lots of data to cope with, such as a call centre logging in excess of perhaps 1000 calls or more a month. Outside of such an environment we would not recommend this solution unless there were a compelling reason for it.
We Build It
Given our client base we have built a number of mini PC solutions as well as pre-configuring Apple solutions for rapport users.
This is not expensive and the cost of it is completely under your control as, you specify exactly what you want. Of course we will offer advice on any build to you for free.
Naturally the cost will depend on exactly what you wish done however the hardware cost can b completely controlled by you as, you can buy what you want and send that to us should you wish or, we can source the items you need for you. The choice is completely in your hands.
Cloud Solution
We would suggest though that, rather than the cash outlay for dedicated hardware and then the cost of maintaining that over the years, having to update on occasion and so forth that you may wish to consider our cloud based solution instead.
For a very low monthly cost you can have all the features you have on a local PC in the could, available 24/7/365 anywhere in the world you happen to be.
This way you’ve no initial outlay to make, the cost is fixed and you have no worries over hardware, backups or anything else really.
You just get on with what you do in your business.
