Good day.
We are planning to install QuickBooks Enterprise in our company. Is it required to install it on a Windows Server or are there any other way?
If installing it in a Windows Server, is it okay to install it to a server with active directory?
Thank you.
It is not recommended to install software not related to AD itself in the same server. Reason being if some software is acting up and ends up taking down the server itself then now you have AD and that software down. It is also a security risk because now you have to grant access to a server that should only be handling AD. It is much better to isolate servers and their functions.
You could probably get away with installing this on a desktop with windows 10/11 or something if this is a money issue. If you go down that route I’d also have it backed up regularly with a 3-2-1 backup strategy. That is a very critical piece of infrastructure.
I agree with @xMAXIMUSx that this should NOT be installed on the same server running AD. I am curious though if there are multiple users that will need concurrent access. If that is the case there many be additional services to support this use case that only Windows Server will support.
So we can install it to a normal PC. There website suggest that it should be installed in a Windows Server. If we can install it to a normal desktop with the required hardware requirements, I think that is the best route for us. And yeah, back-up is a must.
We will be implementing it in a multi-user mode. So we are needing concurrent access. We wondering since, the suggested OS in there website is Windows Server but according to @xMAXIMUSx we can install it to a normal PC.
Quickbooks is such badly written over bloated over priced software, with loads of really old legacy code (bit like windows)… if you want an easy life, put it on the cheapest windows server licence you can buy with LOADS of memory and CPU power on SSD/NVME and a good quality intel NIC
Plus if it was my resposibility to keep it up and running… I would put proxmox on the server first and install windows server in a VM and use proxmox’s nightly backup, to backup the VM to a local network share
Its simply not worth your while trying to “do it on the cheap” … only your boss’s 
I said you might be able to get away with this. If users have to RDP to this desktop then there can only be 1 concurrent RDP session at a time. If you put it on a windows server then you can buy user CALs and pay for how ever many concurrent sessions you want.
If it were me I would do this right from the beginning and set it up properly with windows server with the proper licensing. I’d rather be safe from Microsoft audits and heartache of a half implemented infrastructure.
There are times where you can skimp on things but here would not be one of them IMO.
Personally I would look to deploy this in Azure and leverage both Azure and QB for backups to satisfy the 3-2-1 rule. I do this for some of my customers and the cost is around $250/month which includes RDP access via MFA. Considering this is one of the most critical applications a business will run the cost is pretty low IMO.
When I’ve had need to do this, I configure a Hyper-V VM with Windows and install QB on the VM as a server install. Then the QB on the clients access the VM company file share.
I have been thinking about this approach. But QB does not recommend installing their software in a VM.
Have you tried this on actual? Are there performance issues?
All my QB deployments run on VMs. In most cases software companies don’t recommend it as it is one less variable they have to support.
Hi renz193,
The system requirements for Quickbooks Enterprise state that Windows Server is required for multi-user mode. QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Technical Specs | QuickBooks (intuit.com)
Can you install it to a server with active directory? Sure. Should you, that would be most definitely no.
If given the opportunity deploying on-premises Quickbooks should not be the end goal or your first choice in 2024. It’s a product on life support. Businesses that need it likely already have it, are stuck with it and have the infrastructure to support it and seeing that it’s a subscription anyway now ($1500/yr min) there’s no a shortage of turn-key SaaS solutions.
A Window Server 2022 Std. 16 core license msrp’s around $1000. You’ll need to check your server if that’s enough.
Do it right if necessary, people get mad if they don’t receive their paychecks on time.
This is my standard practice that I’ve employed many times over the last 15 years and it has always worked well for me. As long as the server has enough memory and CPU resources to support the Windows VM, I’ve never had a problem or had a performance hit.
We have our own equivalent of an “dodgy Intuit type” company here in the the UK who here have also cornered the UK/European accounting market, it’s called Sage
I’ve supported both over the years and both are overbloated now from their brilliant early days which allowed them to dominate.
The companies have been more focused on revenue generation then investing in proper codebase developement for years now (my guess just continous plastering over over the years, which they can do because its all closed source so can’t be scrutinized)
Consequebtly you have to throw a decent amount of horsepower at them to keep them chugging away
When hosting it locally… even more than the specs of the server…it is even more important to have decent network hardware and cabling installed by a decent installer (like lawrence systems )
I would still recommend locally hosted if you’ve got decent IT support and infrastructure in place (all cloud hosting is just dependence, and you will always be at the whim of these massive companies).
But I do appreciate, if your not big enough to afford it, for most SME’s cloud hosting just makes sense, there simply isn’t any proper competition anymore in this market
@renz193 what exactly do you mean with “active directory”? do you mean a server with the DomainController Role set up on it or just a server part of an AD Forest?
On a server running a domain controller you should never install anything else on - if possible. This one’s the most important part of the whole AD and should be handled with extreme care.
I recommend a separate server (or VM) with the RDS Role activated and connected into your AD. You can then install your application onto it and Users can access it with the Remotedesktop-Client App on their Windows Machines (which is part of Windows anyway).
This way you have your Server hosted locally and don’t have to spend a lot of recurring fees like in a cloud-setup. I’m also not a big fan of Cloud only - one solution never fits all and never solves all problems.
Since you’re running ActiveDirectory, I assume you’ve already a (virtualized) OnPrem infrastructure in place. So adding another server there is much easier than to put it into a cloud hosting + having to do security, remote access, etc. there as well.