I am an independent contractor that contracts out to my interns that are spread around the whole country. I am still a small business that would like to make an efficient and affordable setup. So far, I have figured that for $500 a piece, I can buy pretty good refurbished PC from ebay and set up my software on them. What is the best bang for buck remote access I can deploy to have very smooth remote access system going on? I have read that windows RDP is a free option. Is there a exponentially better paid option that won’t break the bank for me? What would you guys recommend?
Another reason I want to do this is that we don’t have to deal with file transfer back and forth. I would like to keep the files in these computers. This bring me to my next question. Is it possible to set up a single drive that contains all the files and no matter whichever computer they have remoted in, they would save the files in one central location?
A distributed file system would be a nice addition. Ceph, gluster…
I haven’t seen this recommended anywhere but you could get a beefier computer, slap on windows server and use Remote Desktop session host that will allow multiple users to connect. You can get a 5 user license for about $250 from a quick google search. You can enable gpu rendering for rdp but if that does not work you can get a slightly older version of windows server and use remote fx. Pair that with a vpn server install and now everything will be in one place.
zero trust platform . there are many vpn alternatives with easy to setup archetecture.
Sounds to me like your in way over your head and need to find a good geek in your local area. Setting this up is just one challenge but management and running this long term is going to be more challenging. Are you ready to stop your every day business processes to manage this, deal with user issues? By the questions you’re asking, i.e simple file sharing between systems, your going to leave your employees, company and customer data vulnerable trying to learn this on the fly.
I guess my question to you would be, you need an appendectomy, Reddit users in a Doctor forum say its easy to do, just mark area to cut, clean area, make incision and clamp off intestine, remove appendix, suture wound and bandage. Sure you saved money, more impressive you did it yourself, over the next 2 weeks you have to prevent infection. Are you going to try it?
Pfsense for a free firewall/vpn. Have 3 ports on it (WAN,LAN,VPN Network). Buy a cheap (1gb link speed) switch to facilitate multiple computers, and plug the remote access computers to the vpn network.
This keeps them off of your internal home network from a threat perspective. And can be had for about $100-250 for the setup. Beyond that, you can proceed with whatever design you want, and leverage RDP access.
Many others have better solutions, but this is another way to go about it.
