Amazon AWS EC2 or WorkSpaces for 5 users?

Question

I remotely manage a small company's network half-way around the world. They have 5 local users connecting to their Windows server sessions with RDP to a physical in-house Windows Server, and they want to migrate to cloud computing.

I'm not sure WorkSpaces is the right solution, or if I should just stand up 5 EC2 instances one for each user. But individual instances whether WorkSpaces or EC2 defeats the advantage of a single machine to install applications that are immediately available to all users who connect to their sessions by RDP.

Windows RDS (Terminal Services) licensing requires a dedicated instance on AWS which is very expensive, otherwise I would do that. Windows RDS licensing is not an option for on-demand or reserved EC2 instances.

If you've been down this road before, please let me know what you recommend.

Answer 1

You cannot remote desktop on AWS Workspaces. It is a different model of compute. If you just need your 5 users to access your applications, you can use Workspaces to save TCO. A typical use case for this are call centers where your end-users just need to access the apps.

You pay Workspaces for monthly use whereas EC2 are paid by the hour/year/etc.

Answer 2

Launch a Windows EC2 instance with SQL Server on it. Create 5 users for that server and provide the 5 users RDP access to that server. You can even create that instance in the region that is near to those 5 users.

You will need Client Access License from Microsoft https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/product-licensing/client-access-license.aspx if you need more than 2 sessions on RDP.