1 Topic by ALERC_NC

  • ALERC_NC
  • ALERC_NC
  • Moderator
  • Offline
  • From: British Isles
  • Registered: 27-01-2012
  • Posts: 20

Topic: Remote working

Hi Everyone,

Having had a conversation about this today and considering that home and remote working might be something that is with us for good now, it would be interesting to know who has Recorder set up on a server and is accessing it over a VPN etc. from home.  There may be people out there who want to do this but at the moment only have Recorder on a single standalone machine and require a bit of help and support.

Thanks,

Tom

Tom Hunt - Association of Local Environmental Record Centres, National Coordinator

ALERC_NC's Website

2 Reply by PaulBarrington

  • PaulBarrington
  • Veteran
  • Offline
  • From: Greater Manchester LRC
  • Registered: 25-07-2012
  • Posts: 71

Re: Remote working

Hi Tom, We have this setup in Greater Manchester.

Recorder6 sits on a dedicated Windows server in the Council's data centre and we access it using the Recorder6 client application on our laptops once connected via VPN.

I would be interested to hear if others are finding this to be a workable solution. I wouldn't recommend this setup based upon our experience in Greater Manchester. Recorder6 frequently crashes and when it doesn't crash it takes ages to run reports, that's after I paid to increase my bandwidth (currently getting upwards of 40mbps).

I don't import data over the VPN ever as it seldom works. We are actually considering having a dedicated computer in the office for running the whole of Recorder6 (front and backend). This is a downgrade from having a client server setup but I'm hoping it will improve reliability and make the application more responsive. We have around 3m records. Shouldn't take 12 hours to run a report based upon a rucksac but it does. Yesterday I left Recorder6 creating a report for the EA from 11am. It finally crashed at 3am. I'm not sure if it's the council's VPN or Recorder6 (or both) but this setup is not working well for us at all. I'm having to rely upon spreadsheet snapshots more and more and manually merging files together to create an updated view.

PaulBarrington's Website

3 Reply by nmrs

  • nmrs
  • Veteran
  • Offline
  • From: London
  • Registered: 22-11-2006
  • Posts: 387

Re: Remote working

Hi Tom, as a permanent homeworker I access Recorder 6 on my server via VPN; however, I work directly with R6 on the server, not via the workstation module in another VPN session. This works fine for me but I suspect not everyone will be able to do so due to in-house security restrictions etc.

Les Evans-Hill
Senior Data Officer
Butterfly Conservation, Butterflies for the New Millennium and National Moth Recording Scheme

nmrs's Website

4 Reply by ALERC_NC (edited by ALERC_NC 28-04-2021 15:15:32)

  • ALERC_NC
  • ALERC_NC
  • Moderator
  • Offline
  • From: British Isles
  • Registered: 27-01-2012
  • Posts: 20

Re: Remote working

Thanks both, very useful.  I guess this will be something for the Recorder steering group and wider usership to consider more and more as I don't think home working is likely to decrease.

Regards,

Tom

Tom Hunt - Association of Local Environmental Record Centres, National Coordinator

ALERC_NC's Website

5 Reply by atheta01

  • atheta01
  • Veteran
  • Offline
  • From: YNU Coleoptera recorder
  • Registered: 30-10-2009
  • Posts: 321

Re: Remote working

Hi Tom -  a very belated reply to your post. At Doncaster LRC I work remotely via VPN and have done so since March 2020. I have a network copy of R6 (latest software, latest dictionary) on the works laptop. The laptop is the workstation and the database sits in a dedicated server in DMBC's systems. I also access from home all Doncaster Council's systems that apply to me to run the LRC. The system does seem to work very well and we are lucky in that we have an IT section that is very sympathetic toward the R6 software and the occasional R6-related problems that I throw at them. Much depends on my home internet connection of course, and I had to upgrade my connection to a fibre-optic connection for something like a decent speed, as I run half a dozen applications at the same time as well as R6, and handle some very big files. (Can anyone remember dial-up?)

Bob Marsh
Doncaster LRC
Coleoptera recorder for YNU

atheta01's Website