Dear all. I have a small office with 5 computers. I need to have the hardware secured so that no one can copy the source codes and images etc. can i have an arrangement so that the keyboard, mouse and monitor signal cables carry the info from the CPU to the devices. all 5 CPU's to be kept in another room! i also need to know the max lengths of the cables USB mouse and Key Board cable VGA monitor cable are there any other options for the security measures? thanks to all.
backup all 5 computers hard drives, using acronis true image. have one server tower with five virtual machines. recover the 5 computer hard drives images onto the virtual machines. you will need quite a beefy server about 8gb ram. install a 4 disk raid 5 could do it using centos and create a software raid. so you will have one server tower with all the machines on. and every user from the real machines can connect to these machines via network and work on them. but you will have to add each user to the network so it asks for a username and password to access each virtual machine. once every user has finished they simply close the virtual machine and all work is saved on the server tower.
BoBBYI986 thats an Ultra Geek solution!.... can you please explain at more length like... server processor spec (will an AMD Phenom X3 8650 on ASUS M3N78EM MotherBoard be suitable?) I am also using win XP and with Visual Studio 2008 and SQL server Express...on all 5 machines.. for ASP.NET progrmming..... will this server take the load? also what is the client computers specs? do i need boot via network? do i need a HDD on the client? :doh: otherwise i was expecting something simpler on the lines of long USB+vga cables... for mouse, KB and monitor.... can you please help me on above smipler lines as well? Thanks in advance!
I'm not sure I understand... how exactly would having the machines in a different room protect the data? Is it that they will be in a locked room so that nobody can physically steal the HDDs, or are you concerned that your developers will leak your source? If the latter is the case, no scenario will protect your source code. If your devs have access to the code, they can steal it. In the former case, I agree with BoBBYI986. It makes a lot more sense to use the existing machines as terminals against a central server. If all 5 machines must be separate from one another, I would use one of the following deploy them on a central server with a fair amount of RAM and at least 4 CPU cores, preferrably a dual-CPU system with 4 cores each (8 cores total) and 8-16GB of RAM based on your needs. A 4U SuperMicro server with a RAID-10 would be a cost-effective way to achieve this. Depending on your expertise, you might want to use Xen on Linux to have 5 separate virtual machines running your windows hosts for development. Otherwise, a Windows server with 5 client access licenses would probably be a better option for you, though it is a lot less secure, reliable and flexible than a Linux server would be, and will cost more if you get your software legitimately. Of course, this may all be moot depending on what you're ultimately trying to accomplish... so, what ARE you trying to accomplish?
Hi, I suggest you invest in something along the lines of a xeon quad setup or a Core i7 about 8-16gb ram. and install four disk raid 10 in centos 64 bit (software raid striped and mirrored no parity). Install VMware server, clone the hard drives of the five machines as mentioned in the previous post. recover the hard drive images onto the the virtual machines. Now the five office machines (real machines) format them and install windows xp, vista, seven whatever you want. make sure you give each machine a user name and password. Install remote desktop on each machine. The router will assign dhcp (ip address, gateway,dns etc to each vm) you simply go onto the office machines launch remote desktop and type in the ip of the virtual machine you want to connect to and begin work. and when finished simply close remote desktop. When setting up your Virtual Machines all you have to do is assign some hard drive space, assign ram, install vmware tools, set it to boot from cd in the vm's bios, boot from acronis true image and recover image onto the vm. if you ever decide to shut your server off say for the weekend or somethin. you will have to shut down each virtual machine just like you would with a normal machine, if you simply shut off your server tower without shutting down the vm's you can corrupt any of the vm's so make sure you power them off properly. BTW: I would also invest in a UPS for your server.
