VDI and DaaS

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Rollo
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VDI and DaaS

Post by Rollo »

Has anyone had any success with virtual desktops? I looked into it a couple of years back but it was way too expensive and too much of a risk. And it went way over my head.

Seems more common place now and BIM seems to have raised the profile of GPU powered workstations.

Interested to know of any succesful applications out there if you're happy to share. Particularly if have done it without an internal IT dept!

Cheers
Rollo
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Re: VDI and DaaS

Post by jamesworrell »

Cheap to have a play - certainly if on Windows 365.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/servi ... l-desktop/

Can fire up GPU instances etc - pay by the hour.

Just pick a local data centre so as to minimise latency.
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smacl
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Re: VDI and DaaS

Post by smacl »

Rollo wrote: Tue Dec 31, 2019 4:12 pm Has anyone had any success with virtual desktops? I looked into it a couple of years back but it was way too expensive and too much of a risk. And it went way over my head.

Seems more common place now and BIM seems to have raised the profile of GPU powered workstations.

Interested to know of any succesful applications out there if you're happy to share. Particularly if have done it without an internal IT dept!

Cheers
Rollo
Hi Rollo,

One concern for existing applications would be licensing, where our virtual desktop SCC users would typically need to use network licenses rather than USB keyed or node locked licenses. You can virtualise USB ports but we've found it very hit and miss. For network licenses you typically need a fixed server name or IP address that makes your license server visible to virtual environment. Realistically you need someone who knows their way around networks for this.

The other issue relating to point clouds is how you get large data onto the virtual environment, where you've got to get it over an internet connection rather than a very fast LAN or direct connection. Not a huge issue for the likes of the Pegasus, where data is relatively evenly spaced and hence compact but a real pain for high performance imaging scanners like the RTC360 where data sizes can be huge. Same for big drone derived point clouds. For guys working remotely with data they've just captured, hotel wi-fi makes this is a deal breaker and high end laptops are a must. For people working remotely on data that has already been uploaded to the cloud, this is not an issue. If the data is in the office and not on the cloud, remoting in to do some processing works well but still occupies an office based workstation and software.

Applications wise, Correvate do this for registration, JetStream for more general processing and viewing and POtree as a good free opensource viewing and sharing platform that allows you take some measurements. My feeling is that we'll see more software like this over the coming years but it will be a mix of shared cloud based storage and cloud compute rather than just virtual desktop with data local to that desktop.

All the best for 2020!

Shane
Shane MacLaughlin
Atlas Computers Ltd
www.atlascomputers.ie

SCC Point Cloud module
Rollo
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Re: VDI and DaaS

Post by Rollo »

Thanks for the responses, time to give it another go I think. Aimed mainly at kinematic scan data rather than static as it is easier to upload.

Will update on how we get on

Cheers
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