1 tower 2+ small office workstations

[Stoper]

Hello to everyone!

 

Inspired by LTT YouTube videos about 1PC 2/7/8(10) gamers I decided to make something similar in my small office.

Currently we use two computers like Intel Celeron G1840, 2.8GHz, integrated graphics, 8GB of RAM and basic SSD.

Soon I'm moving to a new office and would like to hire a new person, also one computer is constantly acting out so its time for some changes.

I would like to create a clean look environment with only a monitor + keyboard&mouse on each desk.

One tower is easier to upgrade and can have better components to share its resources.

We do basic office work without the need for strong graphics, additional RAM cant hurt because sometimes we have to open big PDF/CAD files with building blueprints.

I have some experience in building PCs but not much in server configuration.

 

Can I please get some help and directions in this topic?

 

Regards

[thinwalrus]

I would not go for that in work environment. Check out Intel nucs. Those make great office pc:s and the new ones even have 4c8t i5 for pretty cheap. 

 

[Windows7ge]

1 tower may be easier to upgrade/manage but it also means if it goes down then everybody is down. If you have backup computers if this machine went down then there was no real purpose in having it just to put up with downtime for maintenance. Not to mention probably only 1 or 2 people will know how to operate it on the server side of things which will be bad if they're out of the office and it decides to have a hiccup.

 

For a workplace environment it's not worth it. Better off with NUCs like thinwalrus said. If it's just something you want to play with like at home it might be worth pursuing.

[paddy-stone]

Agree, this is a BAD idea for office IMO.. as others have stated above, if it goes down, you're all down and no work gets done until you have it fixed. Which in this case could be days. Also you would need to have very good frequent backups of the data you work with I'm sure, as to me these seem very temperamental.

I'd go with building a couple of low power PCs personally, something like a b450 + Athlon 200GE, and if you don't already have one, a server/NAS for storing data on so that if the PCs go down, you don't lose the data as well.

[Stoper]

@thinwalrus

@Windows7ge

@paddy-stone

 

Thank You all for answering.

Now we have it set up like on one computer there is SQL database that other computers connect via LAN to use sales software for invoicing, accounting and storage management.

This is my computer that is running 24/7 and if it goes down not much work can be done besides writing emails and watching YouTube videos to kill some time.

Computers are encrypted with TrueCrypt so if it crashes nobody knows the password to even reboot it.

All the data like My Documents and desktop files are being backed up automatically to MEGA cloud.

 

Are the dangers of one tower really that much higher than what we have now?

Isn't it better to have one high-end rock solid computer to share its power than a few low-end computers?

I guess for the price of 3 cheap-but-ok CPU/motherboard/PSU/RAM we can buy one that is better then 3 of them combined.

[Mikensan]

29 minutes ago, Stoper said:

@thinwalrus

@Windows7ge

@paddy-stone

 

Thank You all for answering.

Now we have it set up like on one computer there is SQL database that other computers connect via LAN to use sales software for invoicing, accounting and storage management.

This is my computer that is running 24/7 and if it goes down not much work can be done besides writing emails and watching YouTube videos to kill some time.

Computers are encrypted with TrueCrypt so if it crashes nobody knows the password to even reboot it.

All the data like My Documents and desktop files are being backed up automatically to MEGA cloud.

 

Are the dangers of one tower really that much higher than what we have now?

Isn't it better to have one high-end rock solid computer to share its power than a few low-end computers?

I guess for the price of 3 cheap-but-ok CPU/motherboard/PSU/RAM we can buy one that is better then 3 of them combined.

Given what you've said so far, I would consider hiring an IT consultant / professional / friend, to rework everything.

 

Having employees working on a single point of failure isn't a good idea - neither is adding another single point of failure. 

 

You'll still have 3 instances of windows to maintane with the added bonus of unRAID, hoping it never breaks.

I'd ballpark $1200 using cheap parts + licesning, $1600 properly built. Instead you could buy 4x of these: https://amzn.com/B06XKWVD21/ for $1600 and have a spare - or dedicate your current desktop as a "server" and use the fourth one. 

 

Also..

If you're not already aware, there's a lot of controversy surrounding TrueCrypt, may want to consider something else for the new solution. The cloud storage provider you're using is the one and same as the one who had everything seized not too long ago. Their practice last I checked has not been audited to verify their security. Just something to consider and be aware of.

[Stoper]

15 hours ago, Mikensan said:

Given what you've said so far, I would consider hiring an IT consultant / professional / friend, to rework everything.

 

Having employees working on a single point of failure isn't a good idea - neither is adding another single point of failure. 

Thank You for Your input, can You please suggest a solution to this problem?

Should I run two "servers" with the database?

I try to manage the computer side of things because I like it and it lets me relax from day to day office stuff.

I like and am not afraid of reading, learning, trying and sometimes failing in new things.

 

As to the TrueCrypt issue I think I have read my part about it and I think that 7.1a should be safe.

I guess feeling safe depends of the level of one's paranoia but i feel ok

 

[myselfolli]

1 hour ago, Stoper said:

Thank You for Your input, can You please suggest a solution to this problem?

Should I run two "servers" with the database?

I try to manage the computer side of things because I like it and it lets me relax from day to day office stuff.

I like and am not afraid of reading, learning, trying and sometimes failing in new things.

 

As to the TrueCrypt issue I think I have read my part about it and I think that 7.1a should be safe.

I guess feeling safe depends of the level of one's paranoia but i feel ok

 

Youn could set up a failover database, yeah.

 

But honestly, I agree with @Mikensan, hire an IT consultant. Because while I am all for trying new stuff, you are inevitably going to break something and that's obviously a problem in a firm.

 

So yeah, avoid single points of failure as much as humanly possible, redundancy is king.

[Mikensan]

4 hours ago, Stoper said:

Thank You for Your input, can You please suggest a solution to this problem?

Should I run two "servers" with the database?

I try to manage the computer side of things because I like it and it lets me relax from day to day office stuff.

I like and am not afraid of reading, learning, trying and sometimes failing in new things.

 

As to the TrueCrypt issue I think I have read my part about it and I think that 7.1a should be safe.

I guess feeling safe depends of the level of one's paranoia but i feel ok

 

If you're using M$ SQL, under maintenace it has a auto-magic backup feature. A "live" database isn't always written to file, so if you are manually copying the actual mdb file - it might be really old. I would setup a backup schedule that makes sense to you, and then off-shore it to the cloud or maybe take a copy home every month.

 

The next part is how important time is at your company - how much is it going to cost to be down per hour? How fast can you run out to best buy, buy a computer, install SQL, and restore the database? Or if you have a spare computer laying around - same question. If the cost of that many hours exceeds the price of another computer - I would go ahead and buy another computer. You could keep it as a hot spare, or as another pointed out - fail over. If the cost greatly exceeds the price of a PC then high availability is the way to go.

 

I would definitely buy small form factor PCs if a tidy desk is the goal. A "complex" solution can be harder to fix and just end up taking forever to resolve. Sadly this day and age it's rare people upgrade hardware, we just end up outright replacing. Be it for faster PCIe lanes, newer USB ports, faster SATA, m.2 slots - just end up outright replacing.

 

If I remember correctly the issue with TrueCrypt wasn't just that the latest version might've had backdoors, but that it as a whole failed security audits.

Looks like in 2015 an audit was done and it looked good - honestly hadn't followed up in a long time. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2015/04/02/truecrypt-report/

 

If you do end up with Windows 10 Pro, you could switch to bitlocker which will definitely stop random Joes from stealing the disks and getting data. Also gives you a central way to manage it and decrypt if need be.

 

 

Now an off-the-wall idea, if you do get a second server you could host RDS and buy thin clients for your employees. You do have to buy some CALs but they're about the same price as buying Windows 10 Pro anyway. I don't see a performance issue with running SQL + RDS together given the assumption their workloads are light. You could even use the RDS portal so they could work from home should the need arise.