BIM and the Cloud
In this article, Chris France, CIO of Little Diversified Architectural Consulting, a 225 person firm located in Charlotte NC, describes how they built a private cloud that included their high performance graphics workstations. A private cloud differs from the public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services or Google by the fact that the cloud computing infrastructure and resources are controlled by the individual business that deploys it. Little’s cloud is the first AEC workstation cloud in production and is on track to reduce the firm’s workstation and laptop hardware expense by 67% ($2M) over the next 10 years. The article also describes many of the additional business benefits the firm has achieved through its workstation cloud approach and shares some of its implementation details.
This is a great article…very interesting to finally hear a success story for shared desktops in an AEC environment. The only question I would have relates to the “secret sauce” section. There is a reference to a “utility software for multi-user access” but the name of that software is not provided. What is this utility software that is part of the secret sauce?
Exactly as Bret said: This is a great article… Could you please provide us with the name of the software for multi-user access?
Thanx a lot from Switzerland
I have spent an hour looking for the same software mentioned. please share!!! thank you for the great article!!!
My goal in writing the article was to let readers know WHAT is possible with the current technologies and applying them to the AEC industry. If you want to know the details of HOW this is done, then we’ll need to enter into a consulting engagement. You can connect with me through LinkedIn and we can go from there. Thank you for reading my feature article on AECbytes. Several readers have already contacted me and we are beginning an engagement.
- Chris France
http://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherfrance
How is this legal? In order to allow for concurrent RDP sessions you would have to replace termserv.dll with a modified version not available through Microsoft?
Thank you to Chris and Lachmi for bringing us this excellent article. I am involved with some small firms who would like to be able to make long distance live Revit connections work. I look forward to future developments.
I see two options if Windows 7 is being used as the “host” on the rack-mount server w/ 32 GB of RAM:
1) Hyper-V server with a number of virtualized Windows 7 computers specific to each user.
2) Modified/Hacked Windows 7 Remote Desktop to allow multiple concurrent users (I’m with Mark — I believe this is a violation of the licensing agreement w/ Windows 7… if you want to do this, the official way, see option 3)
3) High-powered server with Windows Server 2008 R2 x64, with proper terminal service licensing for the number of users connected (your default server install doesn’t give you licenses to run it as a terminal server)
More reading:
RDS/TS Licensing
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/licensing-terminal.aspx
I won’t leave a link to help people use multiple concurrent users with Windows 7 because I believe this would be a license violation of windows 7, and any firm that did this would really risk some nasty licensing repercussions.
I found this in a few minutes.
http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3692&Itemid=232
I don’t know if it works but if just might fit the bill.
I have not downloaded or tried it.
Alan
I am getting asked questions about legalities of this method and no EULA’s have been violated (Microsoft or Autodesk) as I looked at that real hard. I fully answer this question on this linkedin group:
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=2675716&discussionID=13817340&goback=.anh_2675716.ana_2675716_1266431474745_3_1.anh_2675716
This is straight from Microsoft Windows 7 EULA section as it relates to Remote Access Technologies:
Remote Access Technologies. You may access and use the software installed on the licensed computer remotely from another device using remote access technologies as follows.
- Remote Desktop. The single primary user of the licensed computer may access a session from any other device using Remote Desktop or similar technologies. A “session” means the experience of interacting with the software, directly or indirectly, through any combination of input, output and display peripherals. Other users may access a session from any device using these technologies, if the remote device is separately licensed to run the software.
- Other Access Technologies. You may use Remote Assistance or similar technologies to share an active session.
Hi Chris, could you post the name of the Linkedin group so I can join. All I get is “Sorry you are not a member of the group you are trying to access” when I follow the link above.
Thanks
Gerry
“High Performance Desktop Virtualization” is the LinkedIn Group I am posting to.
Thanks
C
Thanks for putting this great article together Chris. Congratulations on pioneering the task of desktop Virtualization in AEC industry. On our end at BCJ, I have been working with our IT team on similar lines.
When came the time to collaborate on BIM models across two offices, we tried everything in the book and outside of the box in the following sequence.
Initially we looked at breaking the model up so the teams could work independently and sync via FTP overnight. This was time consuming and cumbersome. We then looked at using WAN optimization to speed up the ‘save to central’ and working over the VPN, but didn’t get good feedback from others already using the solutions.
We then looked at RDP and other remote access solutions seriously, so that the model remains within the LAN and on the same server. HP-RGS looked promising, but then we settled with RDP, since it was free and worked on multiple OS hosts.
In terms of virtualization, we initially focused on a standard desktop configuration that was portable and easily replaceable if damaged. We were early adopters for running virtual machines on the Intel Mac Pro desktops and laptops, and continue to use them in production. We have achieved similar results under test condition with our Mac Pro desktops with what you have done with HPGW. The network/business licensing model is essential for implementing the virtual desktop solution.
Your article encourages me to pursue the ‘private cloud computing’ track. I’m very hopeful that soon most vendors will acknowledge the demand and let their products run on a virtual infrastructure.
Folks. I just got off the phone with Autodesk and they stated that our BIM Cloud has NO ISSUES with their EULA providing the following conditions are met.
1. You have a valid license for each concurrent user that opens up a Revit session in the Cloud. (we do)
2. You don’t violate your regional usage licensing. What this means is that your US people can’t use the BIM Cloud licenses during the day, then go home, then your China operations starts using the same licenses on the BIM cloud. You can’t share across regions. Little is not since we are all US.
In fact, they want to ENCOURAGE this type of computing and I am working with them to fully embrace cloud computing, remote desktop, and virtualized PC’s.