Can anyone suggest a RDP / VDI solution for me?

I am looking for a solution whereby 5 of our staff can work from home from time to time and have access to their desktops via RDP (over the internet - bandwidth should be fine here), so I am trying to see what kind of options there are.

I have a i7 core machine with 8gb of ram which can be utilized to run ESXi and have maybe 5 Win-7 OS-es setup on it but I am not sure if this is the correct route to take?

Should I be looking at getting a Windows Server 2008 R2 OS instead and then running Remote desktop services from there? But if that is the case, wouldn't that mean that my users would be using a Windows Server OS? I need them to use Windows 7 due to the current applications installed in them.

Thanks.

Hi there.

Running Esxi is fine -- I use it also (currently with a W2K3 Virtual server but going to upgrade to W2K8 later).

However what you want is for your users to be able to access their desktops (or actually SEE the same apps as they would see on their desktops) when running from HOME.

The way to do this is to have a VPN "server" type application on your "Remote Server".

I'm not quite sure how to set this up but once its done the users when they log on from their home computers would see the identical work space as to what they would see when logging on to their desktops when connected to the LAN.

Note that any purely "Local" ap[ps they have on their desktops would not be available of course.

The advantage also of a VPN as opposed to pure and simple RDP is that a) The remote desktops would not need to be switched on and b) you wouldn't have to mess around with trying to find out Network names / IP addresses of the work desktops -- especially as these are likely to be behind firewalls and connected to a private LAN.

I'm sure other brains far more in tune with this sort of stuff than mine is will help you out -- but a VPN seems to me to be the way to go --- that's how loads of offices manage these days.

Cheers
jimbo