Support Roundtable: What Every DBA Ought to Know Q&A (Part 2)

Here is the second installment of our Questions and Answers from last week's Support Roundtable,  What Every Blackbaud Database Administrator Ought to Know.

Updating Workstations, Installing Patches and Testing Updates

Q: Is it possible to run the application directly from the server (deploy) share? We would like to avoid a end user to have access to write/replace the executables.
A: The best option to provide this security is to use Terminal Services so that users can access their Blackbaud application via a central server that your administrators manage.

Q: Just for clarification: non production environment is different from sample database?
A: Yes, a non-production environment is different than the sample database.  The sample database is a database created by Blackbaud programmers while a non-production environment is a copy of your live database installed on a separate server to be used for testing and training.

Q: Does Blackbaud support running the production applications (RE, FE, BBNC) in a VMWare environment?
A: Yes, Blackbaud supports its applications in a virtual environment.  However, we are not able to assist with the setup of the virtual environment or any performance issues that are related to the virtual environment.

Q: At some point, I was told a terminal server environment was not recommended. Is that still the case?
A: No, this is not the case.  All version 7 Blackbaud products are supported in a terminal server environment.  In fact, our OnDemand services use Terminal Services installed with Citrix to publish Blackbaud applications for remote access.  See our System Requirements for more information.

Q: How often do you recommend backing up the data to the test environment? Should that be just when you are planning to test?
A: We do not have a set recommendation for refreshing the data on the test environment.  I would suggest that at a minimum you refresh the database before testing major changes, such as global changes, Blackbaud updates, SQL Server updates, etc...  Some clients that use a test environment frequently may refresh the database every week or every couple of days.  Refreshing the test environment helps to test the validity of your backups so it doesn’t hurt to do it weekly, or more often, if you have the time and resources.