Ramham13

Ok, so my wife and I have a Synology NAS and have moved almost all our files over to it. Big win so far. But the next challenge is to figure out how on earth to organize things. So far, I have two different main folders: Personal and Business. We both use windows, so It was pretty easy to map both of these as network drives so we both have access while we're home(a VPN for remote access is in our future). On the personal side it’s pretty easy going, if we need something we can spend time looking for it, no biggie. But we're both at a loss for the business side. Our business consists of mostly graphic design, laser engraving, and 3D printing. We make our own products, as well as custom products that customers bring in or request. So we end up with all kinds of files from software to machine configuration files to 3D models to receipts and on and on. I don’t know if there’s Software solution for this or any templates/examples. The coolest thing we’ve found is Adobe Bridge, but it’s still doesn’t work for everything. Does anything out there have any suggestions? As always, this is probably in the wrong forum, please move if needed.

This may be the wrong place for this question. If so, please move it. I have had a few laptops with a built in SIM slot(most recently a Lenovo X1 carbon), but I’ve never really considered using it until recently. I’m working for a startup and frequently have to remote into a variety of different systems to help troubleshoot. With the nature of my work I’m frequently in places where I don’t have access to WiFi, sometimes in the side of the road. So having a data plan that is embedded into my laptop sounds pretty nice. I could tether my phone, but another advantage is that I could use a different network for the laptop, that way I get wider coverage (i.e. I use T-Mobile for my phone and VERIZON for my laptop. If I’m in a VERIZON dead zone, I can tether my T-Mobile phone as a backup) Use: • Remote Desktop via PARSEC/TeamViewer/RDP • Open documents from shared drives over VPN • Download user manual PDFs for misc equipment Pros: • Instant internet access nearly anywhere(no searching for WiFi or tethering my phone) • No extra cables or devices to keep up with(as opposed to a separate hotspot) Cons: • An extra monthly data plan • Data limits (speed/volume) I’m curious if anyone else has had much experience with this and can point out any other pros/cons.

Just to clarify, I’m not necessarily looking to build this for real production, but to simulate production and the challenges I face there. I’m sure if I can bulls something that I’d trust, then someone out there could do it better. After typing up the post and reading the comments, it seems pretty obvious to go with completely separate redundant machines with software configured failover. h0m3 nailed pretty much everything on the head. CPU cores are questionable. I don’t know if the Soft PLC would ever really utilize more than a couple cores, but in theory you could run an entire facility off of one server, so maybe? There’s other visualization software that may run on the same machine. None of this is really done currently (that I know of) so I don’t know that there’s many industrial PCs or pre-built systems out there that are suited for the application… or maybe I’m just paranoid. The whole thing makes me uncomfortable and just seems wrong. Like putting mustard in coffee or installing a screen door in a submarine. But I know it’s the future, and I’ve seen what’s happened due to the last generation not embracing good change.

Budget (including currency): $2000 - $8000 Country: USA Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Industrial Manufacturing Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Ok, this is an odd duck for sure. I'm a Manufacturing Automation Engineer and live in the world of PLCs and real-time processing. Any equipment I use needs to be rugged enough to stand up to a harsh environment and be insanely reliable. Millions of dollars and peoples lives are literally on the line. Due to these factors, and many others, I have always hated and loathed any OEMs that use windows software to control real-world equipment. Dedicated hardware (PLCs) have historically been much more robust from both a hardware and software standpoint. No surprise updates, no crashes(unless you made a mistake in your logic), and no bloatware to slow down processing. However, times are changing. "Soft PLCs" are getting more popular and I'm starting to test them on small, non-critical equipment. I want to start building a PC/Server that I could trust to run a larger/critical machine and still be able to sleep at night. Requirements: Real Time Processing I think this has more to do with the OS and software than anything I'll be using CODESYS for this example Redundant everything If the the CPU were to blow smoke, it has to be able to instantly fail over to another CPU without missing more than a couple microseconds Same with RAM, Storage, ETC This may be able to be done through the software. Networking Ideally a machine like this would be racked in a controlled environment and all the IO would be controlled through industrial network protocols. Several 10+GB NICs would be very useful Ram Little needed. 16GB is overkill (I think) Storage Little needed 1TB is more than overkill I've built a few PCs for workstations and gaming. Based on that experience I would start with the following config: Ryzen 9 5950X 16GB DDR4 3600 1TB SSD GTX 1050 Ti 4GB For the real build I want to have more hardened/reliable components, think server class hardware, so I'm sure all the components above are gonna get thrown out the window. Bridging these two worlds of hardware is really hard for me to wrap my mind around, so any help/suggestions/advice is super appreciated.

Just wanted to share a quick update. I ended up going the VM route and its been amazing. I'm only running a couple at the moment but it was surprisingly easy to set up and is a super smooth experience. No issues with running fusion on multiple instances at the same time. I went to spec out new budget PCs and even bought a used pc to test, no bueno. The used pc was $300 and was a terrible experience(compared to the VMs). To build a budget PC it was going to be about $500. My workstation that I'm running the VMs on now was about $2500 but based on the experience so far, I could easily run 6-8vms with no perceivable drop in performance. That comes to $350-450 per user station. The only challenge I haven't addressed yet is USB interfaces. I'm sure there are going to be issues I'll have to solve when I need to save files from the VM to a thumb drive on the client, but I'll cross that bridge when it comes up. BOTTOM LINE: I wouldn't recommend this to EVERYONE, but if you're technically inclined and don't mind spending a day or two to set things up(it took me 5-6hrs), it is a very doable project with great user experience at the end.

Thanks for the great feedback so far... I'm not dead-set against the individual workstations, but it still seems that the VMs would be cheaper in the long-run. If even I built two of the servers @berberries listed and ran 10 VMs, the cost would be about $600/VM. For clients I was looking at using the cheapest hardware I could find, possibly even Raspberry Pi's. I'm not sure that I could build an equivalent workstation for that price. Again, I don't need high end hardware for the software we're running, but I don't want our members to have a horrible experience on a bare bones used PC. Obviously a VM with effectively 2C4T and 12GB of ram wouldn't be the best experience, but I don't expect all 10 VMs to be used at all times. My expectation is 3-4 active VMs on average and the full 10 would only be used when we have classes or events. Am I grossly misinformed that you van set up VMs to dynamically be allotted resources dynamically? i.e. If I have 10 VMs set up, but only 2 are being used, those two VMs would each have roughly 50% hardware utilization. If two more VMs started being used, each VM would get ~25%. If that kind of setup doesn't work than I probably am going down the path.

Before I even start... Yes, I realize I could buy low end/used PCs. Yes, I realize this project isn't necessary. Yes, I want to proceed anyway, so long as its at least slightly practical. Ok, so I'm working on setting up a makerspace. Its a slow process and I'm trying to piece it together as we go so that it grows to fit our community. The first things we are wanting to add are 3D printers and workstations to be able to create models and run the slicer. Today we just need Fusion 360 and Cura(and maybe a couple related programs), but down the road we will likely add some graphics software(Photoshop, Illustrator, etc), developer software(Visual Studio, Arduino IDE, Sketch, etc). So our workstations won't necessarily be doing a lot of heavy lifting, but I'd like to offer a decent experience for the people that come in to work on projects. Here's what I'm looking at: 1x Host(PC/Server) Good specs, not over the top Primary OS can be Windows or Linux. I'm more familiar with windows but am willing to work with linux if its better for the project. 10x Clients Bare bones machines remoting into the PC/Server OR Remote Peripherals connected back to the PC/Server Based on my current understanding, I would prefer that the Host be running virtual machines that can be accessed via remote connection. My reasoning is that I could always add more VMs and allow members to remote into the host using their own device(laptop, phone, tablet). This way they can use whatever software is available without having to take a seat from someone that doesn't have their own device. Also, supposedly creating VMs that use dynamic resources is much easier than it used to be. If I understand correctly, I could create 100 VMs but the hardware resources are only split between the VMs that are currently being used. Let me know what you think. I could only find one similar thread, but it was from 2015 and I'm pretty sure there have been some technological advancements since then.

Thanks for the feedback so far. I understand there would be some latency problems and it would be expensive, but I think for us it would still be worth it. The part I guess I left out is that we both want to have our desktop setup as well, so we would each have a "desktop" and a laptop. So, effectively we could both have our own desktops and remote connect to it and have the same result, but I thought making one tower with two VMs would save some space and maybe be a bit cheaper. The simplest alternative would be for us to each get a desktop($2000) and a powerful laptop($2500). But that comes to about $9000 and I figured I'd cut some corners if possible. P.S. I have no idea what it would cost for a machine that could do what I'm asking.

I looked through the forms and found some projects that had similar results, but I'm not sure if any of them actually do everything I'm needing. So here goes... I am an engineer, my wife is a graphic designer. We both need computers that can handle a pretty heavy load. The software that I use most is AutoDesk Inventor and she primarily uses Adobe Illustrator. I would like to build a tower that we can both use and have different accounts(we have different definitions of "clean desktop" and "file management"). The end result that I need is a single tower that we can log into our individual accounts from individual separate devices and run our programs without any major sacrifices. For example, she is in the living room designing something in Photoshop on her laptop while I'm in the garage working on something in Inventor but all the processing is being done by the tower in a closet. For right now I only need to be able to connect via LAN, but eventually a WAN connection would be cool. I don't know if this is possible or not. If so is it cost effective, do the client laptops have any specific hardware requirements(other than internet connection), and will peripherals(i.e. wacom tablet or 'gaming' mouse) work fine over the connection? Any help would be fantastic!