How would I run applications on two different machines from the same location?

MrRockliffe · 11 Oct 2017 at 21:15

My girlfriend and I both have pretty competent machines now (both i7s, both boot from an SSD, mid/high end GPU), but have little storage (she only has her SSD which is 250GB)

We need to start installing programmes like NX (50GB without any rendering add-ons), MATLAB (computational software) and other demanding software. Instead of investing in different storage solutions, is it possible to have a single solution that caters for both machines?

bledd · 12 Oct 2017 at 00:42

You can, but it would be limited to your network adaptor speed, if you had 2 machines using it at once, then you'd be effectively down to 500Mbps max (if both fully using it). You would notice a performance drop in the applications. To do it well using a shared storage solution, you'd have to spend far more than you would on just getting extra SSDs for the machines.

You'd be looking at 10Gbe ethernet cards for each machine (£100-£250 per machine)
10Gbe switch (£600)
10GBe Synology (£850)
Hard drives and SSDs for Synology (£400-£1200)

They would need their own installed version anyway, so you can't just install NX in one location and use it on both machines at the same time.

MrRockliffe · 12 Oct 2017 at 07:41

Damn okay, so completely not worth it

HoneyBadger · 12 Oct 2017 at 13:48

I suppose an easier way is spin up a VM with Win server and you both remote desktop into it.

MrRockliffe · 12 Oct 2017 at 14:33

I think just buying a few hard drives for each system would be better tbh

In an ideal world though