home working

[xicor]

Hi All

 

I have a budget of about £10k and i need to use that to enable 10-15 staff members to work from home.

 

my thinking was in order to be very cost effective I can recycle the old desktops we have at the school and set them up for remote access, the main objective is to prevent staff from downloading documents to their personal devices and by using a remote desktop hosted in the school we can contain that.

 

1. is there a better more cost effective way to do this ?
   
2. what would be a good cost effective software to allow them to remote in to those machines ? we use the LGFL connection at the school but I find their offering of remote desktop to be overcomplicated and not very intuitive
   

 

below are the things we cant do

 

1. allow them to login to office 365 from their personal laptops
   
2. provide them with school hardware at home
   

 

I appreciate your input on this issue !

[LeMarchand]

below are the things we cant do

 

1. allow them to login to office 365 from their personal laptops
   
2. provide them with school hardware at home

 

Have you surveyed the users? These days it's not a given that an adult will have a PC or laptop, as many get by on phones or tablets - and neither of those are good solutions for wfh.

[MatthewL]

Domain joined laptop as if it would be in school and setup a AoVPN server then its just an extension to your network and get same experience where ever they are.

[fiza]

Have you looked at RDS Remote Apps? We have Remote Apps set up and prevent users from uploading or downloading data from/to personal devices.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Domain joined laptop as if it would be in school and setup a AoVPN server then its just an extension to your network and get same experience where ever they are.

 

That's what we do and it's been ideal. We used it initially for working remotely whilst at trade shows, but scaled it up company-wide during the pandemic.

Paired with an 8th Gen i5 Thinkpad T480 it is pretty seamless.

 

Really effective solution and should easily be achievable under budget.

 

I've got some Dell Latitude 5490's with quad core 8th Gen Core i5's available for < £500 that would be ideal for the job!

 

 

Edit:

 

We also have USB-C docks for when sitting with the laptop alone just isn't practical. Something like a 27" monitor with in-build USB-C dock would be an ideal solution too!

Edited July 9, 2021 by ICTDirect_Dave
Forgot to mention docks! Doh!

[fiza]

OP did say no school hardware can be provided for use at home.

[LeMarchand]

OP did say no school hardware can be provided for use at home.

 

I was going to cast SummonDave until I read that.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Damn! Missed the second part!

 

However it's still the best way if you have £10k to spend. Buy in laptops, therefore not taking existing hardware out of school.

Job done.

[dhicks]

below are the things we cant do ... provide them with school hardware at home

 

Does "school hardware" mean a device managed by the school? We have web-based remote desktop, any staff user can open a Window remote desktop in a browser window / tab, so should be able to use pretty much any available device, although something with a reasonably-sized monitor and a mouse works best. Our remote access server is nothing fancy, I'd have thought even a second-hand server should be quite capable, maybe around £2,000. You could then, potentially, hand out the old desktop machines to staff (for them to keep) who wanted something to use from home, reformatted with the home version of CloudReady (ChromeOS) so there's no Windows licensing to worry about - that's what we've been doing with some of our older laptops.

[Chaniel]

Yeah, my opinion is that if you're expecting them to work at home, you have to provide the kit. The most cost effective way to get them working from home is a decent laptop with a VPN for secure remote access.

[3s-gtech]

£10k could create a very decent AoVPN setup for that many users, including hardware. I'd not want to be exposing any RDS at this time.

[fiza]

£10k could create a very decent AoVPN setup for that many users, including hardware. I'd not want to be exposing any RDS at this time.

We use RDS with 2FA

[Boredguy]

Hang on, you can't allow them to sign in to Office 365 from home? Seems a strange restriction these days when you can have MFA, and use that with Remote Desktop Services and Azure App Proxy to provide the remote connection you need.

 

Setting up a VPN on personal equipment could be a minefield when it comes to support.

 

RDP RemoteApp with MFA via Azure would be the more secure option for ease of Management and security, otherwise if you could provide them with school equipment then AoVPN would be better

[xicor]

the users already have an ipad but they complain about them and are not able to use them effectively at home

 

 

 

Have you surveyed the users? These days it's not a given that an adult will have a PC or laptop, as many get by on phones or tablets - and neither of those are good solutions for wfh.

[xicor]

this sounds interesting, I'll look into it

 

Have you looked at RDS Remote Apps? We have Remote Apps set up and prevent users from uploading or downloading data from/to personal devices.

[LeMarchand]

the users already have an ipad but they complain about them and are not able to use them effectively at home

 

I don't see how any form of remote access will be much better via an iPad. Whilst I'm sure they're what the staff demanded as something that would improve teaching & learning etc, to do "proper" work they need a decent sized screen and a keyboard + mouse/trackpad. (Assuming they have the normal work of school staff - I guess there are some scenarios where an iPad might suffice).

[xicor]

yes school managed device, the web remote desktop based on machine availability seems really good, how does it work ? we dont have any servers at the school as we're fully cloud based but yes £2k can work!

 

Does "school hardware" mean a device managed by the school? We have web-based remote desktop, any staff user can open a Window remote desktop in a browser window / tab, so should be able to use pretty much any available device, although something with a reasonably-sized monitor and a mouse works best. Our remote access server is nothing fancy, I'd have thought even a second-hand server should be quite capable, maybe around £2,000. You could then, potentially, hand out the old desktop machines to staff (for them to keep) who wanted something to use from home, reformatted with the home version of CloudReady (ChromeOS) so there's no Windows licensing to worry about - that's what we've been doing with some of our older laptops.

[xicor]

its more the screen size and the keyboard etc but also familiarity, they are more familiar with word on desktop than ipad

 

I don't see how any form of remote access will be much better via an iPad. Whilst I'm sure they're what the staff demanded as something that would improve teaching & learning etc, to do "proper" work they need a decent sized screen and a keyboard + mouse/trackpad. (Assuming they have the normal work of school staff - I guess there are some scenarios where an iPad might suffice).

[xicor]

its not very cost effective though, as when the desktop reaches its end of 5 year cycle re-using it for home working is better than throwing it in the bin and giving the staff a new laptop - my staff are savages and dont look after the school equipment well :/

 

Damn! Missed the second part!

 

However it's still the best way if you have £10k to spend. Buy in laptops, therefore not taking existing hardware out of school.

Job done.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

its not very cost effective though, as when the desktop reaches its end of 5 year cycle re-using it for home working is better than throwing it in the bin and giving the staff a new laptop - my staff are savages and dont look after the school equipment well :/

 

It's been relatively cost effective for us. We were issued laptops (Lenovo T430's) about five years ago. They were to be our only computer. No more desktops in the office. just three screens and a docking station. Five years on, we're rolling out replacements to T480's and usb c docks. As a remote working solution, using the same device wherever you go and having the same access to network resources whether in the office, working from home or sat in a room at the Edugeek Conference is a blessing.

I agree that perfectly servicable desktops shouldn't be scrapped though, but in this case i was working purely to the £10k figure and using my experience of remote working over the VPN

[xicor]

I agree with you about using a laptop, docking station its borderline perfect - take it home take it to the school just dock and go! only problem is my staff are rubbish with taking care of the school's equipment I had 3 slt members given brand new Dell laptops and within 2-3 years, one of them had several screws missing and a broken hinges, the other has missing keys and the other looked like someone took it to the toilet..... not to mention the other 30 staff members that also had laptops...

 

so i decided no more laptops! and i have them all modular Lenovo desktops all in one, otherwise if they looked after the equipment well laptops would be perfect!

 

It's been relatively cost effective for us. We were issued laptops (Lenovo T430's) about five years ago. They were to be our only computer. No more desktops in the office. just three screens and a docking station. Five years on, we're rolling out replacements to T480's and usb c docks. As a remote working solution, using the same device wherever you go and having the same access to network resources whether in the office, working from home or sat in a room at the Edugeek Conference is a blessing.

I agree that perfectly servicable desktops shouldn't be scrapped though, but in this case i was working purely to the £10k figure and using my experience of remote working over the VPN

[3s-gtech]

We use RDS with 2FA

 

Yeah nothing wrong with a well set up RDS solution. My suggestion was more in caution to the usual quick and easy bang it on a simple gateway or even open the port.

 

We still run web based RDP, but our VPN has made it almost redundant.

[dhicks]

yes school managed device, the web remote desktop based on machine availability seems really good, how does it work ? we dont have any servers at the school as we're fully cloud based but yes £2k can work!

 

We use a Windows server with Remote Desktop Services (RDS) installed - there's a built-in web interface option now, but we've been using Ericom AccessNow for a number of years, which works nicely. RDS allows multiple users to log on to one machine - we have a rackmount HP server for this, but you could use a suitably speedy desktop-type machine, or even host a server away in a data centre somewhere. Actually, you could install the AccessNow client on all the appropriate desktop machines and have each user connect to their own desktop, saving having to buy any hardware, just a small machine for the gateway AccessNow server. You'd need to make sure each desktop machine stayed on the whole time, of course.

 

You need to sort out remote licensing with your Microsoft licensing reseller - you'll need to do that whether you're having users connect to a single remote server or to individual desktops.

[slugshead]

Have you got hardware capable of supporting an RDS environment? Then 100% go for that, server 2016 implementation onwards is great and dead simple to setup.

 

Tested and working from Windows, MacOS (Including the Chinese locked down ones), Android, ChromeOS and IOS.

 

Even tested from China, it's very slow but works and allows Chinese students access to Google Classroom - Forget about video conferencing over it though!

[MatthewL]

If you are expecting them to work at home kit should be provided, you will find not that many have a home PC now and rely on tablets and mobile phones which for me you cannot work on and do stuff via RDP sessions.

 

RDP servers can be expensive especially if having lots use them, unless you already have that setup, domain joined laptop and a VPN client (AoVPN or Direct Access) is seamless. We run over 1000 connections on our setup weather tethered and out in community or at home on broadband then go into office and plug into a screen. Users have the option to take a screen home during C19 and they will be returned when business as usual.