During the global crisis we're likely to face hardware shortages and extended lead times. But there’s a software defined solution to the challenge of remote working.
At Escape Technology we’ve been using Teradici remote workstation PCIe cards for the last ten years in some shape or form, enabling businesses to set up remote workflows and offices quickly and simply – enabling total flexibility in terms of artists and teams physical location.
Remote working is at the forefront of every business owner’s mind, and we’re seeing Teradici technology being used to allow freelancers and outsourced teams to collaborate on data securely without that data ever leaving your building. This solution works not by moving data, but by moving pixels. You can read our blog on Remote Working for Creative Workflows for more detail on the methods.
There's currently a very high demand for hardware, but there’s another option available to us: the software version of Teradici. This enables us to set up and configure all the requirements for remote working without the need for any hardware.
Software-only Remote Working
The software version of Teradici utilises some of your machine’s resources to achieve the same result as a dedicated workstation card. Some CPU cycles and parts of your GPU are given over to achieve the solution.
The benefit is that there’s no hardware cost. It’s easy to set up and has excellent performance (in some cases better than the hardware version), delivering up to 4K 60fps remotely depending on available bandwidth.
There are some specific performance issues to consider when deploying the software version. If you utilise all of the machine’s resources (such as when rendering) then you can lose your remote desktop session due to the machine not being able to deliver the pixels to your remote worker. This can be alleviated by reserving a core for the Teradici software agent so you always have some level of performance for your machine. You can mitigate this by not rendering on all cores across your CPUs – something perhaps that artists need to be aware of.
There are some requirements to setting up this workflow, such as an NVIDIA card with Nvenc capability. However, with the right workstations in place on premises the Teradici software agent gives us an incredibly fast and easy to deploy solution to the remote working challenges of the day.
Another major benefit is security. No data leaves your premises as you’re just streaming pixels from one location to another. You can bypass your VPN firewall, safe in the knowledge that Teradici’s 256-bit encrypted protocol is secure.
This approach means that at scale you don’t have tens or even hundreds of people loading data over your VPN and you’re not swamping your firewall’s capabilities with security remaining intact.
This is, of course, always dependent on your firewall and the internet service capability that you have.
If you need to set up remote working for your staff as a matter of urgency we would highly recommend looking at the Teradici software agent route to remote. Our engineering team can configure your workstations to operate this workflow completely remotely as well, leaving your building risk free.
Contact us to book a demo or an installation.