How best to access guest from outside office

Discussions about using Windows guests in VirtualBox.
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RobinCoventry
Posts: 1
Joined: 23. May 2022, 15:33

How best to access guest from outside office

Post by RobinCoventry »

Hi, I have been using VB for years and its been great, I mainly use it to test system status and restore servers to test conditions, so in many ways I know the product quiet well.

Recently I saw a demo of some remote working system and so impressive by what I saw, and this gave me the idea of migrating one of our small home office (3 users) to Virtual and have remote users accessing their system from a Virtual VM

What I have in mind is a server with 16cores and 64GB plus 2xSSD RAID1, so speed for the server should be fine, my question is, how best for users to access their office VM workstation remotely ? The demo of this bespoke remote working system build their own interface with encryption but I am sure that is way too deep for me, so just looking for the best and most secured method for home users to access their office VM guest, any suggestions ? I know RDP is an option, but anything else ?

Thanks for your help.
scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: How best to access guest from outside office

Post by scottgus1 »

Virtualbox's RDP server is really remoting into the VM's monitor, not the VM OS, so it will have to read the repaints of the monitor output and the 'frame rate' will be relatively low.

Direct RDP into the VM's OS (like MS RDP into Windows, or whatever can be installed on Linux) will quite likely be a better experience.

No form of RDP will be like sitting at the PC directly if smooth video is required. So if your users watch videos, they will be less than sitting-there quality. But typical office work, typing, reading, spreadsheets, etc, can work fine through RDP.

Most modern OS's work best with 2 processors in the VM, so a 16-corde host will have plenty of room. RAM is additive: VM 1's RAM + VM 2's RAM + ... + VM n's RAM + 2-4ish GB for the host OS <= total host RAM. More than 2 modern OS's will swamp out a platter drive, so SSD will be a good idea.
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