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Hosting services are an essential component of the organization of a web presence of any type. Most commonly used for websites, there is, however, a whole bunch of other uses for various hosting services. One of them is to take advantage of the virtual desktop feature and benefit from it in the field of universitary education. In this article, we’ll show, how you, if you rent Debian virtual server can noticeably upgrade the university studies you engage in.
What is a virtual desktop?
Let’s start with the definition of a desktop. When working on a computer, be it a laptop or a stationary PC, you have your virtual environment where you perform all of your work, and store your files, projects, etc. In other words, a desktop refers to your personal account on the operating system of your PC together with all associated data.
While on most occasions, it may be more common to work with your PC and store all your information directly on it, the is a different approach – to access a desktop remotely over a network. This way all your data is stored on a remote server, while the same desktop can be accessed from any PC device. This approach gives us a range of advantages, that can be especially helpful when we have to do with university education.
Advantages of a virtual desktop for universities
- As a replacement for computer labs
Traditional old computer labs are becoming more and more obsolete, considering the fact that most students have their own devices while remote studying is increasingly spreading for different reasons. Despite this apparent lack of usefulness, computer labs are, however, not abandoned completely and do still occupy a great deal of space, while needing special maintenance. One of the reasons it wasn’t possible to abolish computer labs is that certain applications necessary for studying have limited accessibility for students with their own hardware for technical reasons or the specificity of the software licensing. This situation creates a great deal of inconvenience, with computer labs still being present and students having to specially dedicate their time to arrive at them. What can be a solution is the migration of the above-mentioned apps to VPS servers which will allow them to run seamlessly while they will be accessible to any student anywhere through their own device.
- Facilitating and improving the studying process for remote students
As mentioned in the previous point, remote studentship is becoming more and more popular both for practical reasons and for urgent issues. The problem is that in many cases some students cannot 100% benefit from their studying possibilities out of technical reasons. For example, some necessary software can be too heavy for their devices. Virtual desktops solve problems of this kind since deploying an application in a virtual server environment will allow one to use it to its full capacity regardless of the capacities of their own device.
- Scalability
Using stationary computer infrastructure was indeed a rather inflexible structure. Sometimes it was redundant, and sometimes it was insufficient, depending on the current scale of enrollment. If you migrate your computer labs into a virtual environment, scaling up or down will instead become super easy: to get more resources or to cut them down you only have to contact your provider and in a matter of minutes you’ll adjust the number of resources according to your current needs.
- Cost
Using a remote server infrastructure for the needs of your university computer lab will end up being beneficial from a financial standpoint as well. A computer lab is something that necessarily needs a great number of computing devices, together with physical space, and maintenance. Renting a server or some servers will be significantly more cost-efficient. Especially considering that these servers are intended to be used for more specific tasks and shouldn’t be therefore accessed too frequently.
- Ease of management
Keeping special IT staff dedicated to maintaining stationary hardware will mean another significant capital investment. In the case of a remote server, in turn, most of the maintenance job will be done by the provider themselves, and the provider can cover even more aspects for additional payment if you opt for a managed server. In any case, this will result in an infrastructure that is easier and cheaper to maintain.
Conclusion
Remote servers can be safely considered the future of university computer labs, more efficient, flexible, cheap, and easier to maintain. If you still experience difficulties while maintaining a physical stationary computer lab at your university, it can be a game-changing idea to consider renting a virtual private server instead.