Suggestions for a Portable Web Server on a Ship

Question

We have a special situation at our company. We do ship-board equipment maintenance and I have developed a web-based ASP.NET application keep records of the work we do. Most of this work is on the ship. I currently have this application installed on an IIS 7 web server with a SQL Server 2005 back end. 

The problem is that our crews cannot access the web while on the ship. There is no cat5 connection and air card signals fail to pass through the steel hulls. 

A solution that I was thinking of is to use a laptop as a portable server with a wireless router. That of course, would require installing Windows Server and SQL Server on this laptop. It would also require data replication between the  portable server and the main server, once an outside connection could be made. 

There would be up to 25 connections to this portable server. We are also need to do this on as tight a budget as we can.

My question is this: What recommendations would you make on selecting the best and most affordable Windows and SQL Server for this situation? 

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~Sonny

Answer 1

Hello,

What about replication ? You need to have only a SQL Server Express edition on the portable aboard the ship ( it will be used as subscriber ) and when you arrive in an harbour with a possible connection with the central database, you can update this central database thru replication ( the central database must belong to aStandard SQL Server Edition )

Have a nice day

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Answer 2

So SQL Server Express and Windows Server on one laptop as a portable server? Or could you use the ISS server that comes with Windows 7?  Then have the other laptops connect as clients? Is this legal? My understanding is that SQL Server Express and Windows 7 ISS allows only one connection. Or would we have to  install SQL Server and Windows Server 2008 on the server laptop?

I have read the documentation on all of the different configurations (?) of SQL and Windows Servers and find it all very confusing.

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~Sonny

Answer 3

Hello,

I am sorry but i missed your last post.I hope you will accept my sincere excuses.

When you are talking about ISS Server ( for Windows 7 ), is it the 7.5 version ? ( i am thinking to install it on my own computer ( XP SP3 + SQL Server 2008 Developer SP3  and on the Windows 7 Home Premium SP1  + SQL Server Express 2008 R2 SP1 of my younger boy that i am using to test remote connections between 2 SQL Server instances ). If it is the same version, i think that i would be able to start some preliminary tests to-morrow. But i have no Windows Server ( the last one i used was a 2000 7 years ago ).

I will immerse myself in the documentation now and to-morrow.

Have a nice day

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Answer 4

Take a look here, it might be helpful. I believe all Windows 7 Premium editions have IIS 7.5 installed.

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~Sonny

Answer 5

As an update to my original post: I determined that we would need to install Window Server 2008 and SQL Server 2012 with 10 user CAL for each laptop. Along with the price of the hardware, the total would be about $2100 per portable server. This was more than my company wanted to spend, so the idea of using portable servers was dropped.

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~Sonny

Answer 6

Hello,

If i have understood your last reply , the thread may be closed.Please, could you confirm ?

Have a nice day

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Answer 7

i think you must check out this link.

http://www.amarcon.com/index.php?id=131

Answer 8

Hello,

If i have understood your last reply , the thread may be closed.Please, could you confirm ?

Have a nice day

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Mark Post as helpful if it provides any help.Otherwise,leave it as it is.

This tread is still open.

The best solution for us would be to have a direct internet connection via satellite. This would eliminate the need for a portable server. However, our users are inside of a steel ship and cannot use an external antenna, so I doubt that would be a viable solution.  

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~Sonny

Answer 9

i think you must check out this link.

http://www.amarcon.com/index.php?id=131

We would only need the satellite internet connection. The GPS, motion sensing, weather, etc., features would not be required. Also, like I said in my last reply, we will be working within a steel ship and cannot use an outside antenna.

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~Sonny