install user desktop environment on a server - users accesses " their" desktop by remoting in (shared work spaces)

[HerrKaLeu]

Our company may move to shared work stations where multiple people share one desk and work from home alternating. Right now I work from home 100% , and all my work software is on the desktop at my work and I remote in. 

 

I swear I read somewhere a server (as in a real server room run by IT) can be used to install " my"  windows, desktop environment and whatever software "I"  need. So instead of remoting into a desktop, I would remote into the server and it would look and behave exactly the way my desktop currently does. 

That way the local desktop in the office can just be a simple PC that remotes into the server, instead of having all my software installed. 

 

I googled for what it may be called, but can't find it since i don't know the term. I like to propose to IT to allow that. 

 

One problem I see with this desk-sharing is, if the " other person"  is in the office and uses "my"  PC, I can't remote in. Another issue is, I have special software and so far need that specific desktop, which may be impractical when we just use a desk, but not a specific desk. So one day i may come to work, and someone already uses " my"  desk. If " my"  desktop and software is actually on a server, it wouldn't matter. 

 

One problem may be lack of graphics card on a server. Among other things i use Building Information Modeling software that has some graphics requirements. not sure if there is such a thing as enabling a server (like a rack server) with GPU capability. 

 

[HerrKaLeu]

8 minutes ago, James Evens said:

Why does a server can't have a GPU?

 

the buzzword is VDI

thanks. That is what I think I meant. 

 

I'm not an IT person, so forgive my ignorance. So can a GPU (like a Nvidia quattro I have in my desktop) be installed in a server rack? Or are there specific server GPU? I'm not rendering, just some graphics acceleration. I wonder how the resources get allocated. Like we have 1400 employees with computer need, but only a few (like me) have actual GPU needs. Does the VDI software take care of that? 

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Servers and NAS

[Guest]

On 1/16/2021 at 5:44 AM, HerrKaLeu said:

 

I'm not an IT person, so forgive my ignorance. So can a GPU (like a Nvidia quattro I have in my desktop) be installed in a server rack? Or are there specific server GPU? I'm not rendering, just some graphics acceleration. I wonder how the resources get allocated. Like we have 1400 employees with computer need, but only a few (like me) have actual GPU needs. Does the VDI software take care of that? 

So the concept is what we call Virtual Desktop Infrastructure however the implementation differs depending on the vendor and deployment model. The common ones out there are VMWare Horizon and Citrix however Microsoft have both a traditional VDI offering as part of Windows Server and their new Windows Virtual Desktop product as part of Microsoft 365.

 

In terms of hardware (also known as compute), allocations are either done directly, e.g. each user is allocated X RAM and CPU's per OR the servers are scaled so that as more users login, more compute is made available. As part of this, discrete graphics cards (mainly Quadro) can be made available for certain users. 

 

In terms of allocating users to resources, you can either do direct allocation where the user always sees the same session host or can shift the user session around to where resources are available - the method chosen here is entirely dependent on compute availability, billing (cloud vs on-prem) and user load.