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We have a group of engineers who each have their own laptops but there is a need for access to high performance desktops, either for more memory or not wanting to grind down their laptops during long calculations. We use software that is only on Windows and when using these desktops there can be the need for interactive sessions, not just batch/REST API sorts of things.

Right now we have a few independent Windows machines that users can remote into. They are each single-user login, and so you have to "wander around" and try multiple machines until you find one that is free. That's dumb. If the right long-term solution is to get different hardware, that's ok (in the "start asking now for the funds" sort of way).

One or two of the software packages used require physical USB keys to confirm license.

One of the packages is usually used with large amounts of memory (128 GB+).

What options are out there?

  1. Is there any "gatekeeper" software to improve the experience of what we have now, multiple computers? Maybe a front end that shows which computers are available and you can be redirected to the one you choose?

  2. If we go the route of one (or a few) enormous-RAM machines, would it make more sense to set these up as Windows Server multi-login or something like Hyper-V? In these cases, users would need to be told, somehow, when the limited-license software were already in use.

I'm in over my head and would appreciate your thoughts!

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    This question is likely going to be shut down because it's asking for product recommendations, which attracts low-quality and spammy answers. But I'll comment that this is the sort of thing that the whole Windows Terminal Services and Citrix constructions are designed to handle. Research those, and start preparing a budget...
    – tsc_chazz
    Commented Oct 23, 2023 at 15:44

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Yes, in Windows Server you have Remote Desktop Services which can consist of remote desktop hosts and a gateway, which distributes the rdp connections across the hosts.

But in my experience, let developers use big sized laptops and store everything in Git, because the investment you need to make in server hardware to offer a good performance is very costly.

You have the same thing in Azure, called Azure Virtual Desktop. But then again most of the timd, putting developers on a shared remote desktop environment is very hard to do. Because when one developers is heavily building the software thay might hinder another developer because all cpu is taken away, for example.

Or the remote desktop environment only needs to have the purpose of using it as a workplace(using office and so on) , and all software related things are doing in Azure Devops, and maybe dedicated build servers.

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