Home Forums Discussions IT, Networking, PCs and more Is it possible to host the AC database on Linux?

Since Microsoft has made its SQL Server available on Linux, is it possible to get rid of the Windows Server entirely and host the database on a Linux box? The clients running AC would of course continue to be Windows.

@Krestent,

It very well may be possible to run the AC database on SQL Server running on Linux. Microsoft went out of their way to make certain SQL Server on Linux was as close as possible to SQL Server on Windows.

The problem most likely will not be the technology, but Amazing Charts willingness to support running AC on Linux. Adding support of Linux SQL Server would mean hiring more tech-support staff that understood Linux and could work with it. It would also mean coming up with a support matrix for what editions/versions/distributions of Linux they would support. I don't see AC spending the money on such an endeavor any time soon nor do I see the customers of AC paying the higher support fee every year to cover the dozen or so that would opt for a Linux server.

Lastly, you as the client would need to find IT support that would also support Linux which may increase your cost.

As awesome as I am at IT and development, I have to admit that I'm all Microsoft through and through. I do not support Apple at all, barely dabble in Linux, and provide limited support for Android. These platforms are VAST and mastering even one is a huge undertaking. Kinda like a Cardiologist getting into Neurosurgery. Is it possible? Yes. Are they all going to do it? Hell no.

JamesNT

I fully understand AC's willingness (or lack thereof); I'm not asking them to provide support for it since there's no way it's going to be financially viable. Just asking if it can be done with AC as-is, more as an experiment than anything else. I know AC wants me to navigate to AmazingCharts.xml over Windows file sharing, does that mean that some data transfer is occurring over SMB? Or is that just a way for the client to get the server's address, and then it connects to the actual SQL Server on port 1434?


That would end up being me, an embedded software engineer who dabbles in IT . I have more Linux and Mac experience than Windows.

The biggest issue you will have is getting AC to authenticate to the SQL database hosted on linux. The credentials AC uses are hard coded somewhere and I don't know the current credentials in use.

There may be other issues but that's the main one I can think of now.

Ideally, AC would prompt for the database server to use and would store that information in a config file or the local registry. Most applications work that way (TrakNet comes to mind). But AC is more....how can I say this.... "strongly coupled" with SQL Server that most other applications are.

Give it a shot, if you want. I'd be interested in your findings.

James