Overview

Quickbooks is a very common application among our MSP partners’ clients. 

Be aware that handling protected systems running Quickbooks when performing a disaster recovery can have some complications.

Is Quickbooks supported?

Yes! Backup and recovery of Quickbooks is fully supported by x360Recover.

In general, no special precautions or settings are required to perform backups of protected systems running Quickbooks. 

• Quickbooks natively supports distributed multi-user access and does a good job of maintaining the internal consistency of its backend database files. 
• x360Recover can capture the database files and Quickbooks data without special agent settings or configurations.

What are the complications?

The complications with protected systems running Quickbooks arise with disaster recovery scenarios.

• Quickbooks is a very data intense application and relies heavily on low latency network connectivity. See this Intuit support article detailing recommended network preferences for Quickbooks:  Recommended networks for Quickbooks.
• Quickbooks is expected to be either running directly on the local system hosting the database files, or (at a minimum) to be located on the same physical LAN environment. 
• Connecting to Quickbooks data located over remote VPN or WAN connections (or even located on a local NAS device) is not recommended and will not provide a good user experience.

Issues with disaster recovery

In the event of a disaster, if your data is located remotely on an x360Recover vault, (as for Direct to Cloud agents for example), you may not have easy access to the Quickbooks data directly on the same network. 

Using a VPN connection to the Axcient Virtual Office to access Quickbooks data on a protected system virtual machine running in the cloud will likely provide a very poor user experience for your customers.

What are the recommended recovery options?

For our complete guide to Disaster Recovery, see our Recovery Playbook.

• Virtualize on appliance (Best Option)

Deploying an x360Recover appliance for your primary backup device is always the best choice. Protected systems can be virtualized instantly directly at the client site and provide near instant replacement for failed or compromised protected systems. Provided you have a working appliance with the customer data available, this is the best option for fast, immediate recovery.

For help recovering data from an appliance, see: Appliance-specific Recoveries.

If your appliance has been destroyed, or you have deployed only Direct to Cloud backups for the client, see these remaining options:

• Virtualize locally with Local Cache (Recommended for Direct to Cloud)

If you have deployed Direct to Cloud to protect your Quickbooks server and have enabled Local Cache, it fully possible to virtualize the protected system locally. Provided you have at least one remaining server capable of running Hyper-V, or even a beefy desktop system with sufficient memory capacity running Windows 10 or newer, you can deploy Recovery Center and virtualize the protected system on the local LAN environment. This can provide similar performance and accessibility for recovery as the original host server provided.

For help recovering data from Local Cache see: Recovery Center User Guide.

• Remote Desktop Services (Recommended for Virtual Office)

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS)  is ideal for remote Disaster Recovery scenarios. 

RDS provides for multi-user access using one or more Windows servers to provide client user access to applications and services. Deploying a Remote Desktop Services system to each of your client environments provides a wide range of options and flexibility of services to your customers.

• Enable mobile users to securely access applications and data every day
• Provide cross-platform compatibility for Windows only applications to Linux and maOS users
• Provide a ready platform for securely accessing applications and data during a disaster
• Silo hard to install or maintain legacy apps to a limited number of systems
• Centralized management of applications requiring higher security or compartmentalization

Note: Deploying Remote Desktop Services requires one or more dedicated Windows Server machines dedicated to a Client User Access role. Remote Desktop Services requires additional Windows licensing for client access. Even with this extra cost, deploying Remote Desktop Services is well worth its weight in gold during a disaster recovery, and can be leveraged to provide ongoing cost savings and client benefits during normal operations as well.

For help with Virtual Office see: Virtual Office Best Practices.

For help with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services see: Remote Desktop Services Overview in Windows Server.

• Desktop Client Virtualization (Plausible)

If you are protecting your customer desktops, you have the option of also virtualizing those desktops in the same Virtual Office instance as your Quickbooks server. These desktop virtual machines will be connected to the same physical network as the Quickbooks server and provide fast reliable access to the Quickbooks data.

For help with setting up Client VPN see: Configure Client VPN for Virtual Offices.

• Accessing Quickbooks Data remotely using Virtual Office

Multiple methods are available for connecting to Virtual Office and accessing data. 

• Client and Site-to-Site VPN options allow users to connect to Virtual Office directly over the Internet
• Console access to running virtual machines is accessible via Recover Manager
• You can even download your files and access them locally on your device.

Using RDP to connect to a Remote Desktop Services server, virtual workstation, or Quickbooks hosting server will provide the best user experience, and application performance.

• For security, we recommend always using a VPN connection to connect to Virtual Office. 

You can set up either direct client VPN connections for each of your users, or establish a Site-to-Site VPN using IPsec to connect an entire site to Virtual Office. Once a VPN is established, connect to your virtual machine systems using RDP to provide highly performant video and audio streaming of the desktop experience.

 SUPPORT | 720-204-4500 | 800-352-0248

• Contact Axcient Support at https://partner.axcient.com/login or call 800-352-0248
• Have you tried our Support chat for quick questions?
• Free certification courses are available in the Axcient x360Portal under Training 
• Subscribe to Axcient Status page for updates and scheduled maintenance

1993