The following guidelines should be followed when configuring your network to support multiple sites (a need to run Siriusware applications at two or more physical locations). This involves determining your bandwidth needs (both Siriusware requirements and your other application requirements) and configuring your network to ensure bandwidth, uptime, and security. Because this is complex and dependent on factors other than Siriusware requirements, you must use a qualified networking professional to design, configure, and maintain the WAN (Wide Area Network). We highly recommend you have such a professional on your staff. Alternatively, you could hire a consultant to design, configure, and maintain the WAN.

First, you have a decision to make, “Do I use one central Siriusware SQL database or use a separate database at each location?”

Using separate databases with a unique site ID number at each location alleviates concerns about WAN bandwidth, uptime, and security and can result in the best performance and reliability. This is our preferred / recommended setup even though it requires configuration and maintenance of the Siriusware system at each location. While reporting is more complicated because the data is in separate databases, our clients have solved this by using custom enterprise reporting that utilizes reporting services. However, sometimes conditions exist that merit using a single database choice. The guidelines below address this choice.