16 Windows Machines on a Box

For Windows Servers, given how little cpu time they will be consuming I'd be looking at Microsoft Azure.

Seems like the ideal solution
 
randal said:
Lol, nah you're alright.
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My thoughts exactly. If you want free help off the internet you need to give details. If you aren't willing to give adequate details then you'll have to bite the bullet and shell out for a VMware consultant complete with an NDA.

However, in the spirit of being helpful, another thing to note is that a few people are massively over speccing a potential vSphere environment you'd need to run this. If you're only running Chrome in Windows 7 and say its minimum RAM requirements are 2GB you won't need 2GB x 16 for the RAM, that's even if they need to all be powered on at the same time which it doesn't sound like they will. As most of the data in the RAM will be essentially the same, ESXi will intelligently pool it together and share the same physical data between the VM's virtual RAM. On top of that, even though the minimum RAM spec for the OS is 2GB (I don't know if it is, I am just using it as an example), for your use case you can get away with 1500MB I would say, possibly less.

That other guy's idea of using network routing to and from a VPS sounds like a better idea though.
 
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I wouldn't even necessarily use ESXi for this - for a proof of concept I would just use Virtualbox on a normal PC - it has built in RDP support and memory de-duplication/overcommitment options that should be ideal for this.
 
512MB RAM
512MB Swap
1x dedicated 2.2Ghz CPU core
500GB transfer
200Mbps guaranteed uplink speed
1Gbps burst uplink speed
1x IPv4
1x IPv6
XenPV or XenHVM/SolusVM
Optional: Windows Server 2008 R2
Coupon: lowendbox
$3.75/month

go to lowendbox.com

pretty sure if all you need is a browser 512mb will be fine.
 
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Just a quick one, if you get 16 IPs from your provider you will only be able to actually assign 13 or 14 of them to local devices as the other 3 are assigned to
Network
Router (depends if managed service or not usually)
Broadcast

As an example I have just installed an EFM with a /29 subnet (ie 8 IPs) and only 5 are actually usable to me.
 
the_chicco said:
This. Take your 'business model' to an IT consultancy, sign an NDA and fork out for advice as someone has previously put. I don't think anyone on here really wants to steal your 'super money making secret' buddy.
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No thanks. Think I'll pass on that but again, apologies you got annoyed by the fact I wouldn't out my business model despite the fact it wasn't necessary to provide an answer.
 
Gammawolf said:
i7, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD for 16x Linux Mint configured with 1.5GB RAM each? Sounds feasible given the description (one user/one VM accessed at a time). If they do nothing but access the internet then 25GB a VM for disk space is plenty. Just need to get some kit you know works on w/e hypervisor you're going with, personally i like ESXi.
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Thanks, this is exactly the way we went in the end. Working like a dream. :cool:
 
would there be a way to bind browser instances to a specific IP...this way all public ips could have 1-1 nat with X internal ips..alll on one box...
As long as multiple users didnt need to browse concurrently but in series...

that would dramatically cut cost and complexity...
most applications support the ability to bind to a specific ip...
 
RDSH has the option to allow IP address virtualisation, so that each session has its own IP address. I'm not following the thread (its confusing what you are trying to achieve) so this may be pointless post.
 
Just seen this thread, the whole thing sounded dodgy!

"The website that we are working with and dong business with will not allow access from ips that look like they are from a data center because of the amount of fraudulent people who use dedicated boxes from hosting companies to defraud them"

Uhm... right. They got some super firewall which is blocking traffic with the source IP of "FROM_A_DC" :P?

What a waste of a dozen public IP's anyway.
 
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If it's just the internet you're after, then 16 individual Windows VMs is total overkill.

Just set up an RDS server with RDS gateway for remote access. It'll take a couple of hours to setup and meet all your requirements.

It'll also vastly reduce the cost of hardware you need!
 
oli356 said:
Uhm... right. They got some super firewall which is blocking traffic with the source IP of "FROM_A_DC" :P?
Click to expand...

It's fairly easy to learn the source IPs of major data centres, and besides that plenty of commercial firewalls can use geo-location to block IPs from specific countries, cities or areas.

The whole use case is a bit baffling but I suspect the OP is trying to do something like matched betting with multiple accounts, which the betting companies ban in their T&Cs. If that's the case then I doubt grabbing multiple residential IPs will help, the bookies are capable of tracking suspicious betting patterns independent of the source.
 
Just like to point out most normal business isps will ask you to fill in an IPJ form, they will normally give you a /30 for a point to point link, some will give you a /29 but if you say you want a /28 and say you want it so each of your 16 Vms can browse the internet on a different IP they will laugh and most likely reject.

The more you requst they will want valid reasons as to why you want them.

Sounds like your doing it for some unknown reason, If its not dodgy just pat the boxes out. Waste of ipv4 addresses is if its just for web browsing

Not only that but people would be smart enough to do an ipv4 lookup on one of your ips, find the network address and block your range
 
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