trying to make a cost assesment but i'm stuck with what licenses to buy

Question

Maybe it's easiest if i give some background info.

i have an Office Access application running on a Azure vm Server.
i want multiple people (+-10) to be able to work on the server at the same time.
what i already found out that i need is:

• Azure vm running Server 2019 datacenter
• 8 RDS user licenses and for that a Domain Controller is also needed
• since it is an office app i'll need to make sure each user minimum has a Office 365 E3 license.
• the Acces also makes a connection to an SQL-Express, which i think is free but limited to 10Gb.

what other things should i buy or do?

thanks in advance

Answer 1

Something here might help.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/d/4/3d42bdc2-6725-4b29-b75a-a5b04179958b/desktop_application_with_windows_server_remote_desktop_services.pdf

I'd also suggest starting a support ticket here for more help.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/create-ticket/

(please don't forget to mark helpful replies as answer)

Answer 2

Sorry for the late response @Solidguy01 . It is hard to follow the threads here.

So, you want to use MS ACCESS GUI by 8 users at the same time and work on the same database, but MS ACCESS is not a server (application which design to serve multiple users) but an office application which designed to work with files directly.

For example think about SQL Server. SQL Server is a set of services and not a client application. There is no GUI to SQL Server and we connect to it from external applications (the most common is the "SQL Server Management Studio". The server is optimized to manage multiple users and sometimes for a single user it is better NOT to use SQL Server. For example the server include complex and advanced algorithm based on Locks and Waits in order to allow multiple users to work on the same table.

According to your description here is is pretty clear (in the limitation of the short description you gave us) that You want to enjoy both worlds.

On the one hand you want to have the visual ability (GUI) of MS_Access to manage the information, but on the other hand you need the power of a server to manage multiple users' work. This is very common scenario and this is exactly the solution Microsoft provide you; a combination of a single SQL Server database which is manages using MS ACCESS which each user can have his file locally.

The basic architecture is to use Access front-end and SQL Server back-end...
https://youtu.be/uNGqKE0jSDM

what licenses to buy?!?

For this architecture you will need a licence for MS ACCESS for each user, since the user uses the application. and One licence for SQL Server (which can be free if you use EXPRESS edition)