Virtual PC in cloud

greatchap

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 22, 2012
Messages
103
Hello Everyone,

I run a very small company. I have six employees who connect to my computer (running Windows 10) using a remote software like AnyDesk/TeamViewer. I have created 6 virtual PCs using VirtualBox. I turn them on and they connect to each. Then they use inbuilt programs for work.

They only need to use 1-2 applications not anything heavy duty. This setup is working fine but the problem is sometimes due to power failure or internet failure at my end the work stops completely.

I wanted to have a similar setup on the cloud so that they won't be effected by my local issues. How can I achieve something similar that is cost effective and can do the job.

Currently I allocate 3 GB RAM to each user and 2 CPU cores.

Thank you,

Regards,
GR
 
6 hosted desktops might run like $250 a month, depending on what licensing you need
 
I only need 220 hours per month. I am able to get Windows basic desktops from Azure and it will cost me at around $80 per month (for 6). But I wanted to know that should I take 6 servers or 1 big server and create 6 user accounts in it.
 
if you go with 1 big server, wont you need additional Remote Desktop licenses (RDS licenses and add the RDS Role) for more than 2 connections?
 
if you go with 1 big server, wont you need additional Remote Desktop licenses (RDS licenses and add the RDS Role) for more than 2 connections?
What about a single desktop cloud based running 6 virtual boxes like he is currently?
 
Check out vultr 4gb mem 2 cpu 80gb ssd is $20 a month with Windows. You can get smooth linux vms for $2.50 a month if you can go that route.

They have bare metal instances starting at $120 for a 8 thread xeon.

Honestly your current solution sounds terrible. If your going to virtulize a bunch of os use a bare metal hyperviser like esxi or proxmox. Working over a team viewer connection also sounds painful. I would lean too the dedicated Linux or windows instances and your workers should be in a much nicer position to be productive.
 
I hate virtualized desktops, I won't work on that side.

We have had to build UIs as key value store pass thru to alleviate application pressure on desktops. Isolating puts and gets annoyed my partner Dev, but once he saw the stacking of latency on your average VDi solution he downshifted to "build it lighter than a mobile extension of a microwave".

So spare some thought about what your employees are doing and the costs + time associated with maintaining their work environment.

Cache and DB were always pts of cost contention as tuning for a client costs $, typically they'll just inconvenience their employees up to a % of downtime before rectifying.
 
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Check out vultr 4gb mem 2 cpu 80gb ssd is $20 a month with Windows. You can get smooth linux vms for $2.50 a month if you can go that route.

They have bare metal instances starting at $120 for a 8 thread xeon.

Honestly your current solution sounds terrible. If your going to virtulize a bunch of os use a bare metal hyperviser like esxi or proxmox. Working over a team viewer connection also sounds painful. I would lean too the dedicated Linux or windows instances and your workers should be in a much nicer position to be productive.

Linux is not possible for me as my staff use in-house programs that work in Windows only. Microsoft came up with Windows Virtual Desktop. It could be something that can be looked into.

Never heard of bare metal hyperviser. So what should I do? 6 small servers for each or one server and somehow give access to 6 users or ?
 
Linux is not possible for me as my staff use in-house programs that work in Windows only. Microsoft came up with Windows Virtual Desktop. It could be something that can be looked into.

Never heard of bare metal hyperviser. So what should I do? 6 small servers for each or one server and somehow give access to 6 users or ?
Well team viewer is not the proper way to connect to a virtual machine so unless that step is done better I would go with individual server. The $20 I quoted was for a decent windows machine but you could probably get by with the $10 machines and still have a better user experience then your current setup.

Bare metal instances are kind pricey in the cloud. Although it's easily possible to support 6 users on most hardware there is alot more to configuring them properly then just spinning up some virtual desktops in the cloud.
 
Do you actually need VDI? Is there anything blocking you from just using Office 365 for all collaboration, file storage, etc. and just installing whatever software locally?

Otherwise:
1. Just use a managed VDI solution like Azure Virtual Desktop or AWS Workspaces
2. Bring up a terminal server and put a remote desktop gateway in front of it, ideally protected by 2 factor auth, unless you like getting your stuff ransomwared.

if you go with 1 big server, wont you need additional Remote Desktop licenses (RDS licenses and add the RDS Role) for more than 2 connections?

Licensing, CALs included, are generally baked into the cloud offerings that I've seen.
 
Do you actually need VDI? Is there anything blocking you from just using Office 365 for all collaboration, file storage, etc. and just installing whatever software locally?

Otherwise:
1. Just use a managed VDI solution like Azure Virtual Desktop or AWS Workspaces
2. Bring up a terminal server and put a remote desktop gateway in front of it, ideally protected by 2 factor auth, unless you like getting your stuff ransomwared.



Licensing, CALs included, are generally baked into the cloud offerings that I've seen.

I need a VDI as my products that needs to be run require Windows.

What I have been asking is I want to go for server in Microsoft Azure as getting a windows server there is cheaper than in AWS. However should I go for 6 VMS or 1 server with 6 user accounts and each user getting access to 1 account.
 
You'll need Windows Enterprise licensing to do Azure WVD, but you could easily do a multi-session Windows 10 desktop. I'd probably split them across 2 hosts so you can shuffle people around if there's a VM issue.

I don't know what your budget is, but being that you're coming from Virtualbox, you might find the pricing for any DaaS offering to be unpalatable.
 
I forgot about this thread.

AWS AppStream (which I forgot to mention in my last post) is also a good offering - I have managed it before, it's pretty easy to get running. I'd guess your pricing would be in the $175-200~ range a month for 6 users. They can access it directly from a web browser.
 
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