Redundancy Is Critical To Your System | DirecTouch Do It Yourself Restaurant Point of Sale FAQs

What is a redundant system and why redundacy is important to you?

The word redundant or redundancy in a point of sale system is defined as the system's ability to automatically continue to operate if one or more key components fail.

Specifically speaking, many systems require that a back office server be up and operational in order to continue to operate. As strange as this may sound, this type of configuration is very popular even with today's modern technology. Even in a single terminal environment some systems still require a back office computer to process transactions.

Still others will not even start up without a back office computer to feed the operating system and the entire system's database into the terminal(s). This type of technology makes it imperative that a back office computer be in the network and functional at all times.

Both of the systems described above pose real problems to restaurant owners if either the back office computer or even if the connection to this vital computer is broken. In these systems it is possible to completely loose point of sale operations without the back office computer.

How Redundancy Works In A DirecTouch POS System

Each of our terminals is a computer. As such, they do not need a back office computer to start up. Each of our terminals has a hard drive, RAM and a Windows operating system. Each of our terminals is able to stand alone and does not require another computer to operate.

The DirecTouch software takes full advantage of the hardware in the system. In DirecTouch systems with more than 1 terminal the software can be configured to be fully redundant.

First, the software is set up to automatically back up the entire database to each hard drive in the network. Therefore, each terminal is able to operate independently of any other terminal.

Second, the software is set up to automatically back up the transaction data from each terminal to the master/primary terminal and the terminals designated as back up terminals. You can have multiple back up terminals in the network. When properly configured, each terminal in the network can be designated as a potential back up terminal.

Third, the software is set up to automatically recognize if a failure has occurred and then designate that another terminal take over the duties of the server. No intervention by the manager or owner is necessary for this to happen. However, a message is displayed on each terminal to let someone know that there is a problem with the server.

Finally, when the server recovers and come back online the software will recognize this and update the server with any transactions that occurred while it was offline.

What This Means For You

If properly set up, the redundancy feature of DirecTouch will keep your data backed up to the hard drives in your network. In the event of a failure of your server the back up server will automatically take over and begin to function as the server. If that back up server fails, then the next terminal will take over duties as the server. This process will repeat for each terminal you have in your network.

Using this feature will keep your restaurant operational in almost any situation. DirecTouch redundancy is set up to insure no loss of data, no loss of operations and no down time of your point of sale system.

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