7 workers 1 CPU?

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

So the PC's at out office are so old that Windows 10 just doesn't run on them, since they're all XP, we recently had some ransomware attack, and no it was not WannaCry (Luckily all our data was in the cloud)

 

So we thought that the time has come to replace them. First we thought of buying individual systems, but then I thought what if something like '7 Gamers 1 CPU' was more cost effective?

The PC(s) will be used just for browsing and programs like Excel and Word. So obviously we don't need 7 powerful GPUs.

 

Is something like this possible? And is it better than buying individual systems? 

 

Thanks!

[Electronics Wizardy]

Thats called VDI, and normally more expensive unless you have hundreds of systems. 

 

Just get cheap optiplexes, there the best option. Multipoint is a pain, and VDI is expensive(think 10000 in software and anouther 10000 in servers just to get started.

[Droidbot]

Maybe two systems? Try to pick up a server with a recent 12c Xeon or two, VM using ESXi or something similar, and buy some thin clients so they can run from across the office. 

 

Alternatively - lots of G4560/i5 systems could be a good idea and quite economical. 

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

3 minutes ago, CUDA_Cores said:

-snip-

 

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

-snip-

 

2 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

-snip-

Okay so individual systems would be better. Now do I buy per built ones or build?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

 

 

Okay so individual systems would be better. Now do I buy per built ones or build?

budget?

 

What OS?

 

you running ad?

 

How many do you need?

 

Does support matter?

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

budget?

 

What OS?

 

you running ad?

 

How many do you need?

 

Does support matter?

No fixed budget we're flexible but don't want something that's overkill for light office use.

Right now we need around 7-8 PCs running Windows 10. 

I'm pretty comfortable with building PCs and troubleshooting. 

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

you running ad?

Didn't quite catch you there

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

No fixed budget we're flexible but don't want something that's overkill for light office use.

Right now we need around 7-8 PCs running Windows 10. 

I'm pretty comfortable with building PCs and troubleshooting. 

Didn't quite catch you there

just buy some new opiplexes. You get support and a nice reliable system.

[Drak3]

11 minutes ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

 

 

Okay so individual systems would be better. Now do I buy per built ones or build?

Prebuilt, new. Unified warranties are a god send for company systems, and some companies have volume order discounting, with the more you order, the lower the per unit cost.

Take the HDD/SSDs (if applicable) from the old systems, and donate them or recycle them.

[Droidbot]

4 minutes ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

No fixed budget we're flexible but don't want something that's overkill for light office use.

Right now we need around 7-8 PCs running Windows 10. 

I'm pretty comfortable with building PCs and troubleshooting. 

Didn't quite catch you there

used Dell Optiplexes, Lenovo Thinkcenters, HP Elite series, etc will serve you fine. 

look for something like a Core 2 Quad, i3/i5 - 1st, 2nd, 3rd gen. 

 

Hell, even if you purchase cheap HP/Wyse thin clients like the T610 - they'll serve web browsing, word processing and excel with ease, with a dual-core AMD processor, DX11 graphics, and a couple gigs of DDR3 RAM. They bolt to the back of a monitor well too, for a seamless experience. 

[leodaniel]

For business use always new pre built. You get warranty, good and fast support and even volume discounts.

I would never build them yourself or never use one (centralised) system for everyone... If your "One System, Seven workers fail", you have 7 workers who can't work. I would even go as far as say, don't upgrade them yourself... It can get you some trouble you just don't want to mess around with that in production. This is obviously more for bigger companies, but I would still not upgrade them, costs time / money and can result in much more time / money spent for fixing problems you didn't have before. So it might just not be worth it.

There are also like "leasing" solutions, which can be a good option. You have fixed costs and you don't have to care about any costs in the future (for the contract duration), because Support, fast failure replacement, Software upgrades and all that stuff is usually included... But this comes down to the direct use case and can also be a bad option, but it is always worth consideration.

I think you should not try to rebuild anything from this forum / videos for Business use. It's just something completely different! It's not comparable, the requirements are completely different.

 

[Zodiark1593]

12 hours ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

No fixed budget we're flexible but don't want something that's overkill for light office use.

Right now we need around 7-8 PCs running Windows 10. 

I'm pretty comfortable with building PCs and troubleshooting. 

Didn't quite catch you there

Unless you need a workstation, or something similar for one or two people, just buy a bunch of optiplexes. Save the PC building for when an employee needs a workstation. 

[Zodiark1593]

9 hours ago, leodaniel said:

For business use always new pre built. You get warranty, good and fast support and even volume discounts.

I would never build them yourself or never use one (centralised) system for everyone... If your "One System, Seven workers fail", you have 7 workers who can't work. I would even go as far as say, don't upgrade them yourself... It can get you some trouble you just don't want to mess around with that in production. This is obviously more for bigger companies, but I would still not upgrade them, costs time / money and can result in much more time / money spent for fixing problems you didn't have before. So it might just not be worth it.

There are also like "leasing" solutions, which can be a good option. You have fixed costs and you don't have to care about any costs in the future (for the contract duration), because Support, fast failure replacement, Software upgrades and all that stuff is usually included... But this comes down to the direct use case and can also be a bad option, but it is always worth consideration.

I think you should not try to rebuild anything from this forum / videos for Business use. It's just something completely different! It's not comparable, the requirements are completely different.

 

99% I agree here. PC building is useful for making individual machines for one or two users that need workstations, (though if many workstations are needed, buying in bulk is better), but it is a terrible option for a bunch of office or data entry PCs.

 

It is many times easier to get reliable quick (same day) warranty support from the likes of Dell or HP, as opposed to the numerous vendors that make up an in-house build. Additionally, To make supporting an in-house build viable would require replacement parts on hand to minimize downtime. Perfectly fine for very small scale usages, utter nightmare if half the workforce is using built PCs. 

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

8 hours ago, JayKay3000 said:

He was asking if you have a server, probably windows server 2012r2 with a domain on it.

 

Can't run executables, can't plug in usb devices, can change the wallapaper and so on. The options are massive and almost endless.

 

I'm guessing you don't have this though and you would probably have your own DHCP server. You'd probably also have a custom pre-built windows 10 image and a windows deployment server to deploy the customized image to computers.

-------------

 

That is a really simplified version of what many businesses including small businesses have. In reality it is extremely easy to set up - time consuming and potentially expensive, but simple in the long run.

 

To answer your 7 gamers 1 cpu idea I've only ever implemented this in Linux using Linux Terminal servers and thin clients.

 

Fat clients is pretty much the same except that the OS runs (but is not installed) using the clients hardware thus allowing you to run heavier programs and operate in a more normal manner.

Right now we don't have any such server.

Each employee has their own PC, (Which are damn old) and all our data is in the cloud. We don't have terabytes of data so the cloud is very economical for us. 

 

Here's what I'm looking for in the new setup- 

 

1) Each employee should be able to run applications such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and use Office 365 on a web browser.

2) No employee should be able to copy any data onto a USB/CD/DVD etc..... as we work with sensitive data. 

 

Now if I buy individual systems the cost would be high as we decided to change almost all PCs now. Can we have one or maybe two servers with a powerful processor and thin clients for each employee using one of these - NComputing Thin Clients

 

OR

 

Can we use the existing PC's as fat clients?

 

Since we won't be doing any intensive tasks, thin clients should be fine, I guess?

[leodaniel]

5 hours ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

Right now we don't have any such server.

Each employee has their own PC, (Which are damn old) and all our data is in the cloud. We don't have terabytes of data so the cloud is very economical for us. 

 

Here's what I'm looking for in the new setup- 

 

1) Each employee should be able to run applications such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and use Office 365 on a web browser.

2) No employee should be able to copy any data onto a USB/CD/DVD etc..... as we work with sensitive data. 

 

Now if I buy individual systems the cost would be high as we decided to change almost all PCs now. Can we have one or maybe two servers with a powerful processor and thin clients for each employee using one of these - NComputing Thin Clients

 

OR

 

Can we use the existing PC's as fat clients?

 

Since we won't be doing any intensive tasks, thin clients should be fine, I guess?

As I have already written my personal advice on Hardware, I will just talk about Data Security.

 

My opinion to that: The best security you can get is through trust in your employees and good encryption. As you said, disabling USB/Ports in general can help, as it is harder for the thief in the first place to copy the data. Tho disabling those features with software can always be tricked and are therefore not a viable solution in my eyes. Physically disabling them is more viable, but maybe you need to connect some USB devices in the Future... new accessories and so on.

 

On the other hand, you store your data in the cloud (hopefully encrypted), so I assume they have internet access. In my eyes this is a way bigger problem and has to be addressed first. Best thing would be a system completely uncoupled form the Internet. Of course there are different methods of securing data stored in the cloud, best is always to encrypt the data locally before it goes anywhere.

 

Of course there are more aspects to security, but if you run XP systems today and tell me you care about Data Security this sounds strange to me. I would understand this if you have software because of which you can't update (like hospitals), but from what you said this is not the case

 

Personally I am not a supporter of locking ports in any way. I think on your scale (7 workers) trust is the most viable option and most cost effective solution. Also remember you can always take pictures of a screen with your smartphone, so leaks can't really be prevented (see NSA, Banks and so on). You can only make them a harder.

 

The question is: Is the effort/money you put in making it a bit harder worth it?

[Vishvas Sudarshan]

7 minutes ago, leodaniel said:

As I have already written my personal advice on Hardware, I will just talk about Data Security.

 

My opinion to that: The best security you can get is through trust in your employees and good encryption. As you said, disabling USB/Ports in general can help, as it is harder for the thief in the first place to copy the data. Tho disabling those features with software can always be tricked and are therefore not a viable solution in my eyes. Physically disabling them is more viable, but maybe you need to connect some USB devices in the Future... new accessories and so on.

 

On the other hand, you store your data in the cloud (hopefully encrypted), so I assume they have internet access. In my eyes this is a way bigger problem and has to be addressed first. Best thing would be a system completely uncoupled form the Internet. Of course there are different methods of securing data stored in the cloud, best is always to encrypt the data locally before it goes anywhere.

 

Of course there are more aspects to security, but if you run XP systems today and tell me you care about Data Security this sounds strange to me. I would understand this if you have software because of which you can't update (like hospitals), but from what you said this is not the case

 

Personally I am not a supporter of locking ports in any way. I think on your scale (7 workers) trust is the most viable option and most cost effective solution. Also remember you can always take pictures of a screen with your smartphone, so leaks can't really be prevented (see NSA, Banks and so on). You can only make them a harder.

 

The question is: Is the effort/money you put in making it a bit harder worth it?

Before I start, I'm just 17, and its my dad's office which needs these upgrades. I don't know the in and outs of everything there, but have a pretty good idea. 

 

"XP systems and Data Security" Well that's also one of the reasons for upgrading. 

Its not a big issue right now, and It really doesn't matter if the person takes a photo, unless he/she has a physical copy of one of the documents (with a signature) they really can't do much harm. We do have many employees whom we can trust, its just a few who need restricted access and permissions. 

 

All the data we have is in the cloud as I mentioned, and each employee gets access to only the data that they need to work with (We're using Office 365). And we do make an offline backup from time to time (Stored off site).

 

We're also implementing CRM stuff (Which is sooo expensive), so buying new systems for everyone isn't really a very economical solution for quite a few months.

 

Maybe we can implement everything you said once we get bigger   , but for the time being we really can't afford new PC's for all (Especially since our requirement went from 7 to 14, and CRM). 

 

So in this sorta situation what would you suggest? 

Should I have thin clients ? (like the one I mentioned)? Can I use existing systems as clients? 

 

Or is there something else that you would suggest? : ) 

[it_dont_work]

11 minutes ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

 

Cost is a funny thing, you may not be able to afford 7/14 system. but can you afford for 1 machine to go down and have 14 employee's doing nothing profitable for the n'th number of times the system could crash? In the long run multiple systems is most likely the more profitable and stable business solution.

[leodaniel]

49 minutes ago, it_dont_work said:

Cost is a funny thing, you may not be able to afford 7/14 system. but can you afford for 1 machine to go down and have 14 employee's doing nothing profitable for the n'th number of times the system could crash? In the long run multiple systems is most likely the more profitable and stable business solution.

100% agree with you 

 

1 hour ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

All the data we have is in the cloud as I mentioned, and each employee gets access to only the data that they need to work with (We're using Office 365). And we do make an offline backup from time to time (Stored off site).

So don't really change this system, ignore more security for now on if you don't have the budget for. Keep in mind: More security will most likely be less end user friendly and so have more costs than the investment first (example: you can't use USB for giving someone some data... bad example but you get the point). 

 

1 hour ago, Vishvas Sudarshan said:

Should I have thin clients ? (like the one I mentioned)? Can I use existing systems as clients? 

Keep in mind, this won't be cheaper, those are professional solutions and they have it's cost! First of all server (+ professional Network gear you probably don't have!) stuff is extremely expensive (Just browse the web and take a look at Xeons, Servermobos, RaidCards, pro switches, reliable storage solutions)! And you have to go with that, because of reliability!!! This is not some gaming machine which can go down. Second, those software solutions have a high price (as you might know from CRM)! Please don't do something like this, there are just sooooo many aspects which can go soooo wrong here and this will result in much much higher costs. If you still (for whatever reason) want to go that way then source this project out! Get some people who have a deep understanding of this. There is just too much that can go wrong if you do it yourself. Try and Error is not a good option for a system in production.

In your situation I would take a look at 'leasing' solutions. You have fixed monthly costs which can be very useful. So you can calculate your costs now and won't have to spend more for support/replacement and so on.

[SCHISCHKA]

I use to go to auctions for liquidation sales and companies dumping computers of a certain age. You can score a pallet of computers that will give you a ton of spare parts. You will likely have to buy new hard drives. Reliability is not great with old stuff, but you never know you might get a good score.