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New work computers (tech refresh), a conversation looking for ideas

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ajb:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 24, 2024, 11:08:01 pm ---As to virtualization, [...] availability of someone to administrate all this
--- End quote ---

While there is definitely additional complexity in the initial setup, and it requires some specific knowledge to set things up properly, day-to-day admin of virtual machines is largely the same as with physical machines and actually much *easier* in several ways.  User logins, mapping drives/printers, deploying software, all of that is exactly the same.  Dealing with the machines themselves -- deployment, backup/restore, that sort of thing -- is much easier and faster with VMs than with real hardware, and the real hardware you do deploy matters a lot less if it's mostly just used as a remote desktop terminal.  If a VM is acting up, it's very easy to take a snapshot before doing any invasive or risky troubleshooting, or just deploy a replacement from a template in a couple of clicks in the management interface.  Not having to go out to a user's desk to see what the problem is, scrounge up (or go buy) a replacement machine, image it -- or worse, manually configure it because you couldn't get a replacement compatible with your stock image -- saves a significant amount of time and headache.  VM Hosts do become a concentrated point of failure, but the marginal cost per-user to run them on proper server hardware with some redundancy isn't bad, and at least in vSphere there's decent support for fast, live migration of guest machines between hosts.

Of course it all depends a lot on the specific needs of the operation and what sort of IT resources you already have, but for smallish outfits, the admin load is probably about the same for equivalent physical and VM environments.  Managed/hosted solutions are also an option, though of course they have their own tradeoffs.  For us, in-house virtualization has been an unequivocal win, but YMMV.

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