virtualization experiment. Any advice?

B

brfitzp1337

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 18, 2007
Messages
267
So my uncle owns a bunch of restaurants and they use touch screen pos systems. I want to essentially virtualize all of these and use splashtop with an ipad to remote into these.

I have 4 terminals. They all must run windows xp pro.

Im kind of new to virtualization and would like to build a server for this and try it out.
These machines dont require a lot of power or ram they will funtion fine on a pentium 4 with 512mb of ram.

They do need to be running 24/7

I was thinking windows server 2012 with hyper v. A couple hdd in raid and hot swappable power supplies.
They all print checks to a serial thermal printer and relay orders to kitchen printers.

Any suggestions for the hardware and software?

What am I overlooking?

Also I see there are options for some virtualization solutions that will virtualize a physical computer. Could I use this kind of feature to backup all the computers to virtual ones and be able to test them on the server without touching what they have running already?
 
Last edited:
What happens when the WAN goes down?

Splash top really is not all that great. You would be better off with true thin clients.

Receipt printers, CC readers, etc?
 
Splashtop allows for local mode so the wan wouldnt matter. Reciept printers go over ethernet with serial adaptors on each end.

They already have wiring for that in place. Credit card readers are something I need to figure out still. The cc company has a partnership with square I believe so thats a possibility.

I thought it would be great to eliminate the ups, mouse, keyboard and bulky touchscreen monitor, and computer tower from each station.
 
Seems like you are introducing a lot of complexity into something that is 100% mission critical for the operation of the business. Odds are whoever sold your uncle the POS system will not support a virtual solution when something goes wrong.

From the limited information you have provided about this it seems to me that this is a terrible idea which can easily cost your uncle revenue and damage his brand if something goes wrong.

Restaurants are a very competitive space, if a customer has a bad experience (s)he won't be back but will tell others how much it sucked. This is not the place for a "virtualization experiment".
 
i'll be the first one to tell you that McDonalds virtualizes their POS server, but not their POS clients. Reason: If the server fails, one of the POS clients can go into failover mode, act as the server and everything is up and running again. Time OOS: 8-10 mins. Never allow for a single point of failure.

PAR makes really good products BTW.
 
Just some thoughts, I'd look into different POS software that runs on a server that has a web interface. Then, you can use any tablet to access the webpage without RDP. I certainly wouldn't run POS that runs on XP unless you have to.

My guess is something like that is already available.
 
Ok, you guys have some good points about adding complexity. Ive thought of that as well. My idea was to allow the servers to take orders from anywhere with an ipad, create less possiblity of downtime for clients and create less clutter with wires and peripherals at each station.

I wouldnt touch anything unless I knew 100% that everything would work. I wanted to create a virtual image of all machines and run it along side what they have for testing.

We've looked into ipad pos systems but they all require a pretty high monthly fee.
 
The thing to remember in your testing is what happens when the shit hits the fan.

I see all too often where things ran great for a long time, even years in cases, then the shit hits the fan and the design is really tested.
 
Like Mother's Day crowds. OR if you are in New Orleans, the weekend before Mardi Gras. OR any other large event that may hit the restaurant. It is hard to simulate that type of traffic but you should at least think about it carefully.

Bill W
 
I work for a NCR VAR and one of our verticals is retail and wholesale POS. I think the idea of virtualizing the POS registers/nodes is a very bad idea. The server, I think is a great idea.

In regards to the stations, it sounds like you are taking a simple POS register setup and making it complicated. Some POS devices are very finicky. Have you reached out to your software dealer or manufacturer? Here is a last thought; if you are the only one around that can support it, and you leave or go on vacation and your uncle's register goes down, who will be able to handle that task/call?
 
peanuthead said:
I work for a NCR VAR and one of our verticals is retail and wholesale POS. I think the idea of virtualizing the POS registers/nodes is a very bad idea. The server, I think is a great idea.

In regards to the stations, it sounds like you are taking a simple POS register setup and making it complicated. Some POS devices are very finicky. Have you reached out to your software dealer or manufacturer? Here is a last thought; if you are the only one around that can support it, and you leave or go on vacation and your uncle's register goes down, who will be able to handle that task/call?
Click to expand...

That was exactly what i've been thinking over the past couple of days. If i were to set this all up and get it working and something goes down, i'd be the only one who could fix anything, forever. The software is finicky, and they pos company needs to reload the entire system a lot of the time they have to pay to put a new image on the system, ( i now have it automated so they dont have to pay the pos company anymore for that)
 
brfitzp1337 said:
We've looked into ipad pos systems but they all require a pretty high monthly fee.
Click to expand...

FWIW, an amazing restaurant I frequent went with an iPad POS system a couple of months ago, and it really was a POS! The iPads would drop their connections to whatever they were supposed to connect to, receipts weren't printed out but could only be emailed instead, but for that to work the customer would have to enter their email into the system using the iPad.

The whole thing was such a huge mess and source of frustration for the paying customers that the owner of the restaurant abandoned the whole thing and went back to the old school approach of having servers (the people, not the technology!) write orders down on an order block and hand them in like it has been done and worked well for decades.

Customers were once more happy.

Virtualization is really great for some use cases and not so much for others.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top