servers About a Home Server old-terminal style

[darkghosthunter]

Long time viewer (NCIX times, holy shit time passes like a flash).

 

I was tasked by a friend to make a Home Server. While he doesn't know about computers, he told me the only requisite is to make the server a old-terminal style for his parent's house.

 

He basically wants to have a Monitor, Mouse+Keyboard and maybe a free USB port, directly connected to the Home Server. So you would access to it directly in your VM no matter from where you could connect:

 

 

Quote

".. a full PC experience, but connecting the IO directly to the Server. Every user has its own VM where he logs in. Like when you had terminals connected to a mainframe."

 

 

The problem is to know if it's feasible or not. I thought to have long-ass HDMI and USB cables to each terminal, but I'm not in the loop of this kind of shenanigans.

 

And, of course, GAMES. RPC and a-like are out of the question, lag is noticeable.

 

So, it's this configuration kind of possible?

[Froody129]

What do you mean old terminal style? Like command line interface? What is the server for? If you connect a server to a router then it's quite easy to use it as a network drive like it's a local storage drive

[manikyath]

it is feasible, but it is less practical (and probably more expensive) than having 3 discrete systems, and maybe a small home nas or server.

[manikyath]

Just now, Froody129 said:

What do you mean old terminal style? Like command line interface? What is the server for? If you connect a server to a router then it's quite easy to use it as a network drive like it's a local storage drive

i guess he means like in the olden days having a "teletype" or in more recent style a "thin client" type setup.

[Sernefarian]

IIRC for that sort of network the processors terminal side pretty much only covered their display and funneling user interactions to the central server. Not entirely sure, but it might be possible to recreate this VM-wise using something like a few A6-9500's or Intel Celeron G4900 processors for terminal side along with something more like a 2700X/8700K as the central server CPU.

 

problem I see with that as a possible arrangement is that you might be looking at around $500-600 US for each of the terminals(including monitors) and then around perhaps ~$1000.00 or more for central server.

 

For that same roughly valuation you could likely build 3 significantly higher performance computers and purchase their monitors as well.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Sernefarian
more infos and some speculation

[darkghosthunter]

I edited the question. Basically, a user would signin a VM for himself (or even his Windows account), where he could do whatever he wanted.

 

Basically this: 

 

But I'm planning to shove in a decommissioned Quadro and/or some sort of GPU passthrough.

[darkghosthunter]

7 minutes ago, Sernefarian said:

IIRC for that sort of network the processors terminal side pretty much only covered their display and funneling user interactions to the central server. Not entirely sure, but it might be possible to recreate this VM-wise using something like a few A6-9500's or Intel Celeron G4900 processors for terminal side along with something more like a 2700X/8700K as the central server CPU.

 

problem I see with that as a possible arrangement is that you might be looking at around $500-600 US for each of the terminals(including monitors) and then around perhaps ~$1000.00 or more for central server.

 

For that same roughly valuation you could likely build 3 significantly higher performance computers and purchase their monitors as well.

Yeah, but there is one problem: there is only one GPU. "Can two game with only 1 GPU"?

[Sernefarian]

39 minutes ago, darkghosthunter said:

Yeah, but there is one problem: there is only one GPU. "Can two game with only 1 GPU"?

The simplest answer is yes it is possible for two people to game on 1 GPu ... it will give lower performance for both users by probably around 40-45% of the performance they'd see if each had their own version of the GPU.

[darkghosthunter]

1 minute ago, Sernefarian said:

The simplest answer is yes it is possible for two people to game on 1 GPu ... it will give lower performance for both users by probably around 40-45% of the performance they'd see if each had their own version of the GPU.

Under what? VMware? KVM? Docker?

[Sernefarian]

Depends on what you are using to achieve the effect as overhead between platforms is different as well as their code optimizations towards such things.