I am "the" volunteer IT person for our church, for our church's after-school tutoring program for underprivileged children, and for a non-profit organization assisting women just getting out of prison.  All of these groups use donated computers which I refurbish, install and maintain.  Most of these computers are old and under-powered.  They are running on either Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.

 

I would like to acquire a modern computer for each organization and install unRAID on each.  I would then like to install a number of Windows 10 VMs so as to allow for each church worker or staff member or child to have their own virtual machine.  In this scenario, they would connect to their own virtual machine using their existing old, under-powered computer, but be able to harness the power of a new modern computer which is running their own individual VM.

 

Can this be done in such a way as to ensure that each individual user has access to ONLY their own individual VM and nothing else?  Can each individual user be isolated so that they do not have access to the unRAID system?  Should their data be stored inside of the VM or in an unRAID share?  Could that unRAID share be made private so that each user has access to only their own share?  And could all of this be done in such a fashion as to allow each user to connect remotely using Windows RDP?

 

I'd really appreciate hearing feedback regarding these issues.

 

Thanks in advance!

Could be done... I am however wondering if this would be the best tool for this job.. You would need a rather powerfull machine per organisation with a lot of memory and SSD capacity.. And a lot of windows licenses..

 

I am wondering if you might not be better of installing linux on those underpowered machines.. Or possibly something like chromeOS / Chromium ?

I wouldn't recommend unRAID for this scenario. The virtualization side of unRAID is still developing and has some issues with stability. I would recommend looking at VMware ESXi they have a free license you can use, it is a little picky with hardware so you may have to get an older refurbished Dell or HP server to run it on, but it will do what you want. I hope you realize that for every virtual machine you setup, you will need a valid Windows license? This requirement is for any virtualized environment, be it unRAID or VMware or Hyper V, if you want to setup 10 virtual windows 10 PC's, you need to buy 10 Windows 10 licenses. Each virtual machine would be isolated from the main system and depending on what network shares you gave users access to, that access would be restricted and controlled by you.

I am able to get Windows licenses for $12.00 through TechSoup.com (which handles software donated to non-profits by manufacturers).  Ordinarily, Windows licenses would be a big problem, but not in this case.

 

I know nothing about VMware ESXi, but I'll certainly learn about it.  I have VMWare Workstation loaded on my personal computer, so I am familiar with that program.

 

Thanks for the advice!!

You can have multiple user accounts on a single Windows install, and pretty much lock each account down well enough that each user will only have access to their own files. No need to complicate things with VMs.

You can have multiple user accounts on a single Windows install, and pretty much lock each account down well enough that each user will only have access to their own files. No need to complicate things with VMs.

But not concurrent access unless it is a Server version of Windows.  So I would say a VM for each expected concurrent access is in order.

You can have multiple user accounts on a single Windows install, and pretty much lock each account down well enough that each user will only have access to their own files. No need to complicate things with VMs.

But not concurrent access unless it is a Server version of Windows.  So I would say a VM for each expected concurrent access is in order.

Multiple concurrent access is a licensing thing. Regular versions can do concurrent RDP sessions just as well, but you have to modify some settings and are breaking your license agreement.

 

Since the OP has a Techsoup subscription, the best thing would be to forget unraid as the remote desktop piece, and just build out a Windows Server 2016 box with terminal services licenses for each user. Same end result, but it's all supported through MS, and much easier to manage.

 

I hate that unraid isn't the best solution, but for right now, high reliability and availability for multiple user remote desktops using windows is still a Microsoft thing for a deployment of his size, especially with the extremely attractive Techsoup prices.

 

If the OP was willing to move everybody to open source, unraid and kvm all the way baby! 

You can have multiple user accounts on a single Windows install, and pretty much lock each account down well enough that each user will only have access to their own files. No need to complicate things with VMs.

But not concurrent access unless it is a Server version of Windows.  So I would say a VM for each expected concurrent access is in order.

Multiple concurrent access is a licensing thing. Regular versions can do concurrent RDP sessions just as well, but you have to modify some settings and are breaking your license agreement.

 

Since the OP has a Techsoup subscription, the best thing would be to forget unraid as the remote desktop piece, and just build out a Windows Server 2016 box with terminal services licenses for each user. Same end result, but it's all supported through MS, and much easier to manage.

 

I hate that unraid isn't the best solution, but for right now, high reliability and availability for multiple user remote desktops using windows is still a Microsoft thing for a deployment of his size, especially with the extremely attractive Techsoup prices.

 

 

 

+1... Windows with TS and RDP from the workstations...

On 2/19/2017 at 0:36 PM, ashman70 said:

I wouldn't recommend unRAID for this scenario. The virtualization side of unRAID is still developing and has some issues with stability.

I gather that unRAID uses the Linux KVM engine for managing virtual machines.  I gather that KVM is mature and highly regarded.  What makes its use in unRAID different from its use in any other Linux environment?

I don't know, I just know that many people on these forums are having and have had issues with their VM's. I for one, had a windows 10 VM running perfectly fine without issues then it stopped working about a month ago and since then there has been no resolution. Others are having the same issue I am with their VM's. That being said, it seems that there is still some work to do on KVM in unRAID and so I would not recommend the KVM implementation in unRAID for a business environment.