Server for remote users

[johnknight]

Hi All

I hope you are having a good start to the week.
I have a client who is looking to get a new server.
They currently have a server, that is being used as a file server as well as a QuickBooks desktop server.
They would like something that acts basically the same, but they also want to have Windows 10/11 virtual machines for some users.
They currently have 25 users accessing the server, and would like to have about 15 users being able to remote in when needed (although their will never be 15 users running at the same time).

QuickBooks desktop works on windows only so we would have to have a Windows server OS.
Internet speed won't be a problem, but they would prefer to have an onsite server, so that if both their primary and fail over internet go down (They have had this in the past) that they can still work on local files.

What would be the best solution for this?


Thanks again for your help.

 

[el3venth]

Are you asking from a hardware or a software perspective?

From a hardware perspective: More RAM is better especially if you are going to do things like ZFS for file server.
From a software perspective: I am a Linux guy, talk to the Windows specialists, especially if it comes to licensing and access limits, etc.

 

[X-Calibre786]

Windows Server licenses can get expensive. They're priced on the number of processor cores you're running, and you will probably need a high core count, depending on how many virtual machines you're intending to run concurrently. You would also need a Windows license for each virtual machine you're running.

Question is do you really need multiple virtual machines for those users or do you need multiple people to be able to run a Remote Desktop session to the same server?

I've recently done something similar for a Pastel Server where all the Pastel users would Remote Desktop to the single Pastel Server just to work in Pastel.

 

[johnknight]

Windows Server licenses can get expensive. They're priced on the number of processor cores you're running, and you will probably need a high core count, depending on how many virtual machines you're intending to run concurrently. You would also need a Windows license for each virtual machine you're running.

Question is do you really need multiple virtual machines for those users or do you need multiple people to be able to run a Remote Desktop session to the same server?

I've recently done something similar for a Pastel Server where all the Pastel users would Remote Desktop to the single Pastel Server just to work in Pastel.

So this would work perfectly, if they can then remote in to use Quickbooks that would be great.

 

[X-Calibre786]

So this would work perfectly, if they can then remote in to use Quickbooks that would be great.

In that case you need Windows Server and you will need an RDS CAL for each user/computer that will be remoting in.