Networking

[[email protected]]

Hi All, Im a very small business with 4 people working remotely. I have purchased a desktop computer that is acting like my server and being backed up to Onedrive daily.

My problem is how do I go about that the 4 different people can log onto the machine without expensive server software?

Anomolies:
- different people would need to logon to utilise different software.
- Unlikely that two people would need to access same software

I though I would use Teamviewer as the login purpose but obviously it only shows what is currently on the screen making it impossible for two poeple to access my "server-system".

Any guidance will be greatly appreciated.

 

[[email protected]]

Just to add: Only one person is with me on site, the others are off-site in different provinces.

 

[Scooby_Doo]

Hi,

What are you using the server for?
What software do you have running on it?
Why do they need to login to the server?

 

[PsyWulf]

Hi All, Im a very small business with 4 people working remotely. I have purchased a desktop computer that is acting like my server and being backed up to Onedrive daily.

My problem is how do I go about that the 4 different people can log onto the machine without expensive server software?

Anomolies:
- different people would need to logon to utilise different software.
- Unlikely that two people would need to access same software

I though I would use Teamviewer as the login purpose but obviously it only shows what is currently on the screen making it impossible for two poeple to access my "server-system".

Any guidance will be greatly appreciated.

Server software - from okayish to expensively priced

 

[Venomous]

Just to add: Only one person is with me on site, the others are off-site in different provinces.

Get a dynamic dns service. And then depending on your setup you might need a few more things your end....

 

[[email protected]]

Hi,

What are you using the server for?
What software do you have running on it?
Why do they need to login to the server?

Pastel partner and payroll programmes, nothing major in terms of bandwidth or computer speed

 

[Scooby_Doo]

Pastel partner and payroll programmes, nothing major in terms of bandwidth or computer speed

OS? Windows 10?

 

[[email protected]]

OS? Windows 10?

yep, windows 10

 

[irBosOtter]

Seeing only one person can work on the physical machine you will need to load the client software on the the other pc's as well. Then setup a vpn server so that the other people can VPN in and work remotely...

 

[InvisibleJim]

Depending on your server machine, you could run a Windows Virtual Machine in Hyper-V or Virtualbox for each remote user and they could rdp into that virtual desktop.

Virtualbox could be a nice tool to do this as you can create a base Windows 10 image and run the VM's as a linked clone (master image) which would potentially save hard disk space.

An i5 with 8 to 16GB RAM should handle this with the apps you describe reasonably well. As a small business, a challenge with this set up would be to legally license the Windows for the vm's.

i just want to flag a concern with regards to your backing up to OneDrive which is usually deployed as a sync type solution. File sync is not really a backup as corruption and damage can be replicated to the copy. Products such as Onedrive and Dropbox do seem to me to instill a false sense of security for data protection, especially in the light of the nasty ransomeware viruses that have become prevalent in the last couple of years.