Lol, have my upvote

Its arguable that machines last longer staying at temp.

I use my machines enough that having to boot when I need it is just time wasting.

RustDesk is a great option too for just Remote Access. Though I find it’s performance a bit slow, and with VPN I can use any tool I need same as on the LAN (my workflow is unchanged).

I do use RustDesk for the adhoc situations (friend needs help/new machine, etc). It’s faster to setup for ad-hoc support vs adding a Tailscale client.

You’ll need port forwarding to expose RDP yo the internet

No. Do NOT do this. RDP isn’t designed for the internet, it’s a security hole, even more so in a small business where they aren’t going to use advanced security (2FA, certs, etc).

Remote access should always be over a secure connection, such as a VPN.

Ooh, I’d forgotten about Netbird!

Thanks for the reminder to test it as an alternative to Tailscale.

It sounds like what you really need is a mesh VPN not really KVM.

Install Tailscale on all the machines and you’re set.

Alternatively Hamachi.

Edit: You could also install Tailscale on a single dedicated device on your destination network (such as a Raspberry Pi or mini PC) and configure it as a Tailscale router. This would enable you to access any IP-based device on the network without that device having Tailscale installed on it.

With any of this you could access machines just like on the local network, using VNC or RDP.

Funny how she has trouble finding it!

(Hold the door for me please, I’m right behind you).

Yea this is standard for sharing this kind of info with another company.

Others have mentioned power - you may want to do some math on drive cost vs power consumption. There’ll be a drive size point that is worth the cost because you’ll use fewer drives which consume less power than more drives.

Having built a number of systems, I’m a LOT more conscious of power draw today for things that will run 24/7. Like my ancient NAS draws about 15 watts at idle with 5 drives (It will spin down drives).

More drives will always mean more power, so maybe fewer but larger drives makes sense. You may pay more up front, but monthly power costs never go away.

Also, I’ve built a 10 drive n NAS like this (because I had the drives and the case, mono and ram). It can produce a lot if heat while doing anything, and it was a significant power hog - like 200w when running. And it really didn’t idle very well (I’ve run it with UnRaid, TruNAS and Proxmox).

And while more drives means more failure opportunity, it also means when a failed drive is replaced, it’s likely of a different manufacture period.

I have a 5-drive NAS that I’ve been upgrading single drives every 6 months. This has the benefit of slowly increasing capacity while also ensuring drives are of different ages so less likely to fail simultaneously. (Now I’m waiting for prices to come back down, dammit).

I’ve never run into issues running desktop hardware without ECC as servers - since the 90’s.

I just don’t think the extra cost is worthwhile - I’m not running systems/services that will have catastrophic failures without ECC (or have weird bitflips that would corrupt some transaction).

What’s this “boot” of which you speak?

Do people really turn their machines off these days?

Lol, exactly

Starbucks doesn’t get my money because it’s shit.

I haven’t been to a Starbucks since 2012

Yea, that’s a challenging part for sure, one that I still deal with.

It can be done, but you need to configure the sync jobs “just so”. Send only from the phone, don’t sync deletions, etc.

In the past I’ve setup a master folder on my phone and used subfolders for “upload only” Syncthing shares. Then wherever I put a file on my phone it gets synced to the appropriate folder on my server.

Does it have to be SFTP?

I use both Syncthing and Resiliosync - both are better on battery than conventional file transfer mechanisms, and they don’t require babysitting. They simply sync files as you define.

Alternatively if you must have FTP/SFTP, I have used FolderSync (Play store or Apk Mirror) since about 2010 - I’ve even bought it twice because it’s such a great app. Though I haven’t upgraded in a while because I don’t like the new UI.

The free version does pretty much everything the paid version does, and the devs have always been great.

But I’d use Syncthing, you can even set it to only sync on your wifi and while charging, though I’ve found even syncing a few gigs doesn’t impact my battery (I probably sync 10GB a day while on battery).

I’d never heard JB Weld called steel stick, so I had to click!

PC-7 is another brand that’s identical to JB.

Probably. Why wouldn’t it?

Burn it to a disc or put it on a bootable thumbdrive with Yumi and find out.

It isn’t clear what question you’re asking.

I’ve never seen machine that won’t boot to a WinPE disk, that’s the point of WinPE.