Choosing remote work infrastructure: Server vs Cloud

In this article, we will share the technical specifics of organizing remote access to a company’s infrastructure, as well as compare clouds and servers as the foundations for your remote work infrastructure. Employees get a stable virtual workplace while your administrators get effective tools to manage apps. Remember: it is vital to follow the rules of IT security to protect your corporate systems.

How do businesses work remotely?

The physical presence of an employee in the office is no longer a prerequisite for effective work. All it takes is self-organization skills and a connection to the internet to work from any part of the world. Cloud services, dedicated physical & virtual servers in a provider’s data center are becoming the number 1 solution for cases when remote work becomes a necessity to keep the business functioning. Is it possible to organize a remote working infrastructure based on your local server? Installing all the necessary software and organizing a terminal connection for every user desktop takes a lot of time and effort. Besides, there is no guarantee that the server will be able to handle the constant high workloads. If you want to organize remote work effectively, contact an infrastructure provider that will find a solution quickly & professionally.

How do I organize a remote office on a dedicated server?

Dedicated servers are a popular solution for deploying remote offices. By deploying your company’s infrastructure for remote working in a provider’s data center, you rid yourself of the need to organize security measures for it. Of course, it is vital to choose a trustworthy provider who can protect your valuable business data.

Placing your server solution in a Tier III data center and above provides stability and security: access to the premises and to the server racks is strictly controlled, the hardware is protected from overheating, fires, network and power malfunctions.

The provider will help you deploy a virtual office for corporate systems and apps using specialized software. The main advantage of such a terminal server is that the company will be working in a single environment and using familiar tools while data is stored on a remote server. In other words, your employees will work just like they did in the office, only at home.

The kind of hardware platform your employees use to access the corporate network makes no difference – any desktop PC or laptop can handle the client app used for connecting to the remote office. Data is exchanged with the terminal server using a secure RDP (remote desktop protocol) connection. Data encryption for remote connections is a mandatory security measure organized by the provider.

Renting a dedicated server for remote work is a reliable and cost-efficient solution. All technical support becomes the responsibility of your service provider instead of your in-house administrator. You are also free to choose any software you want: you can use your own licensed software or you can rent it from your provider.

Full root access to the remote desktop server allows you to set up any solutions you need. However, this means that issues such as organizing backups, installing firewalls and VPNs, as well as other security measures are your responsibility. Nonetheless, a client-oriented provider will always have options that can take care of these tasks. If necessary, you can create your own custom server configuration and choose the service level, from unmanaged to fully-managed.

Remote office in the cloud: simple, quick, secure

Cloud infrastructure remains the leader of modern solutions for organizing a remote office. The cloud office, deployed on professional hardware & network equipment, has a number of advantages over other infrastructural platforms. Let’s consider the idea of cloud-based remote working while taking the public SIM-Cloud by German engineers as an example:

• infrastructure migration from your local server and organizing a workspace for employees in the cloud using an RDP connection is quick and easy – a cloud server remote desktop is a ready-made solution, which can be used as soon as your systems are fully migrated;
• unlike dedicated servers, cloud server infrastructure is fault-tolerant and the cloud cluster uses redundancy on the architectural level;
• remote cloud servers use hardware-based data encryption;
• infrastructure management is carried out through the intuitive and convenient SIM-Cloud Dashboard;
• our engineers will help you set up VPN tunnels to protect the data in the remote office;
• no need to set up backups yourself – the cloud has an out-of-the-box solution for reserve copying, SIM-Cloud BaaS, which is activated instantly in the dashboard;
• reserve copies can be stored locally (BaaS Local), in the same data center where the main infrastructure is deployed, or remotely (BaaS Remote), in a separate data center; the first option increases the recovery time, the second option improves security;
• the cloud can be used to organize infrastructures of any complexity – our consultants will provide free consultations and help you if necessary;
• cloud migration can be provided free of charge;
• heavy workloads with high-frequency IOPS can be placed in instances with high-performance CPUs and GS1 storage;
• SIM-Cloud has additional services that simplify day-to-day operations;
• S3-compatible object storage is available in the cloud;
• the cloud can instantly be scaled in the dashboard if the remote office requires additional resources.

If you want to approach choosing a provider from an informed position, read «How to choose a cloud provider» and get acquainted with the criteria that a reliable infrastructure vendor must meet to solve the client’s tasks effectively.

What is the best option for your company?

If you want a quick and simple way of organizing remote work to maintain the company’s momentum, a provider’s cloud is the best option.

Organizing a remote office on your own is a difficult and expensive process that takes knowledge, experience and constant control over data security. It is much easier to delegate the task of creating a solution for remote workers to a team of professionals.

We offer our expertise in quick and effective remote office deployment so that you can maintain the rhythm of your business operations and protect your confidential data using reliable measures.

We have plenty of experience with such projects. When a company with 40 employees needed a virtual office in the cloud, we used Raspberry Pi computers to build an IT infrastructure on a limited budget and significantly lowered the cost of employee workstations. The office in the cloud was created and deployed in 5 days. Using diskless thin clients made the work-from-home setup 3 times cheaper than a regular office PC.

Flexibility and an individual approach to each project is what sets the SIM-Networks brand apart from others. We offer a secure and reliable solution with plenty of possibilities for data storage & exchange, as well as working with the company’s corporate documents. We will do it with minimal effect on your business processes and we will take all of your preferences into account. Contact the Customer Care team – we will consult you on any questions you have so that your remote work infrastructure is set up quickly & professionally.

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