Solved Dual PC-Quad Monitor KVM
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Been asked by a client to look at KVM devices that can support up to four monitors for use on two computers. or an alternative to the sort of arrangement.
They currently use a MAC and PC, but would like to consolidate.. but due to separations of tasks and the need of being signed into different user accounts in the same host system, they have run out of browsers and signing out/in is not practical due to lost of time. In many cases, they are signed into Edge, Chrome and Firefox and this hasn't been enough.
EDIT:
KVM: Keyboard Video Mouse
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KVM is really not the tool for this. What is the use case where they think a KVM makes sense? They want to caomputers and want to switch back and forth between them?
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One thought I had was to use a VM,... but just going over that in my mind,.. that wouldn't be possible. As they would need more than one VM to host all the services needed. Which isn't practical. Unless you can have more than one monitor on a VM....
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@gjacobse said:
One thought I had was to use a VM,... but just going over that in my mind,.. that wouldn't be possible. As they would need more than one VM to host all the services needed. Which isn't practical. Unless you can have more than one monitor on a VM....
Multiple monitors is fine on a VM. No issue there.
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@gjacobse said:
One thought I had was to use a VM,... but just going over that in my mind,.. that wouldn't be possible. As they would need more than one VM to host all the services needed. Which isn't practical. Unless you can have more than one monitor on a VM....
In this case, I think he means a KVM switch that will support more than 1 screen.
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Unless there is some serious hardware complexities here, this is a perfect use case for virtualization on the desktop. Mac hardware if they need one of the systems to be Mac. You'll want lots of memory, but no more than if you had two machines anyway. You can save money and get better performance with VMs than if you did this with two separate machines, actually.
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@dafyre said:
@gjacobse said:
One thought I had was to use a VM,... but just going over that in my mind,.. that wouldn't be possible. As they would need more than one VM to host all the services needed. Which isn't practical. Unless you can have more than one monitor on a VM....
In this case, I think he means a KVM switch that will support more than 1 screen.
Yes, not KVM - Linux VM
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@dafyre said:
@gjacobse said:
One thought I had was to use a VM,... but just going over that in my mind,.. that wouldn't be possible. As they would need more than one VM to host all the services needed. Which isn't practical. Unless you can have more than one monitor on a VM....
In this case, I think he means a KVM switch that will support more than 1 screen.
If they already have two devices, why not use something like Synergy to allow them to control both devices with one keyboard & mouse?
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I was going to recommend Synergy as well. It works really well for what you want to do here.
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@dafyre said:
@gjacobse said:
One thought I had was to use a VM,... but just going over that in my mind,.. that wouldn't be possible. As they would need more than one VM to host all the services needed. Which isn't practical. Unless you can have more than one monitor on a VM....
In this case, I think he means a KVM switch that will support more than 1 screen.
I understood that, Keyboard / Video / Mouse, not KVM the VM technology. But this is case where virtualization would serve the need better, I believe.
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I agree with synergy, it's really seamless.
Too bad they aren't running on Linux. You can have an X session for each monitor.
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@johnhooks said:
I agree with synergy, it's really seamless.
Too bad they aren't running on Linux. You can have an X session for each monitor.
That was actually my first thought, lol.
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I've seen Dual Monitor KVMs before. Quad will be expensive because it's rare but they do make it.
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Port-Monitor-Switch-Audio/dp/B00310EES0
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Synergy seems to be a good option. Watched a few short videos on it, and it might work. I may test it out here on my desktop and laptop.
I'm running three monitors on my office PC, and then only one with my laptop...
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@gjacobse said:
Synergy seems to be a good option. Watched a few short videos on it, and it might work. I may test it out here on my desktop and laptop.
I'm running three monitors on my office PC, and then only one with my laptop...
It should work for that. There are some GUI config tools for windows as well.
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Well I took a leap and got Synergy Pro and after a little bit of configuring (deleting the temp config file) it connect via SSH and I'm off. Seems to be smooth in operation. It is not a replacement for a monitor.. so I use my laptop's screen. In this case I have one other computer I could put it on, but it's across the room and is already running X2Go.
Thus far,.. Synergy-Project for the win.
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@gjacobse said:
Well I took a leap and got Synergy Pro and after a little bit of configuring (deleting the temp config file) it connect via SSH and I'm off. Seems to be smooth in operation. It is not a replacement for a monitor.. so I use my laptop's screen. In this case I have one other computer I could put it on, but it's across the room and is already running X2Go.
Thus far,.. Synergy-Project for the win.
Wow I haven't used it since their site was synergy-foss. It's a lot more complicated to get the free version now. They used to have .deb and .rpm files that you could just download.
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@johnhooks
While I prefer free - open source - I'm okay with the low cost long time usage of the software. -
Just flipped over to my trackball mouse. It is a four button - adding back and forward navigation - and those extra buttons work through Synergy. Scroll wheel works too...
Nice.
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Think at this point - going to mark this as Solved.
Awesome..
