Advice: Having a Windows 7 OS in the Cloud

symba06

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James
Hi Everyone!

Hopefully this is the right place for this question. I'm an experienced PC user but only now I'm starting to wrap my head around Cloud services and solutions.

I work as a Mechanical Engineer, and I rely on a lot of high-end engineering applications to perform my work. These applications also require a lot of resources, like fast processors and big chunks of data.

What I'm looking for now is a solution that allows me to have my whole Windows 7 OS as it is (installed apps, current settings, current data - I don't mind starting from scratch on a Virtual Server and install everything as I need it) through the internet. Meaning, if my computer eventually breaks down or was lost or stolen, I'm able to access my OS immediately through a Cloud / VPS service / Virtual Machine, and can carry on the work like nothing happened.

Are there solutions like this, and if yes, what would you recommend? And most importantly, are these solutions safe?

Thank you!
 
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I'm sorry, but You said before that you're an engineer?
How then these weird questions, if You are really an engineer?
Working with the cloud is more than a little daunting if you have never done so. I have had almost no exposure to using it myself so I can sympathize with symba06.
Hi Everyone!

Hopefully this is the right place for this question. I'm an experienced PC user but only now I'm starting to wrap my head around Cloud services and solutions.

I work as a Mechanical Engineer, and I rely on a lot of high-end engineering applications to perform my work. These applications also require a lot of resources, like fast processors and big chunks of data.

What I'm looking for now is a solution that allows me to my whole Windows 7 OS as it is (installed apps, current settings, current data) through the internet. Meaning, if my computer eventually breaks down or was lost or stolen, I'm able to access my OS immediately through a Cloud / VPS service / Virtual Machine, and can carry on the work like nothing happened.

Are there solutions like this, and if yes, what would you recommend? And most importantly, are these solutions safe?

Thank you!

I wish I could give you some definitive answers but this is not my area of expertise. There are several here who CAN give you some solid answers, though. Give them a little time to see the post and i am sure they will chime in.
 
There are ALL types of Engineers, an excellent engineer in one engineering discipline will not necessarily have any expertise in another discipline.

I don't know of a cloud solution that would allow you to upload your current Win OS 7 setup and run it within the cloud. You could make a system image and save it in the cloud but then if your machine or hhd failed, you would need a new machine/hdd to download the system image to and restore it.

You could create a Virtual Machine from your current setup but you would still need a machine somewhere to run that VM on. Enterprise versions of something like VMWare might help you there.
 
Hi @strollin

Thanks your reply. I don't need to upload my Windows setup as it is right now. I don't mind starting from scratch on that Virtual Server/Machine and installing everything there.

I just wish that, once everything is installed on that Virtual Server, that then I could access that environment using a different computer, for example, with having to install all my applications on all those computers.

Does that make sense?
 
While myself not being the most techy person out there and I can't really help you with the cloud/VM portion I do know there are live versions of Linux you can carry around on drives/CD where you just boot right up and they can store data files too if I remember correctly from what friends have told me. I have never heard of an alternative for Windows as such.

I used VirtualBox once just to play around with and my files never saved on that as it's just loading the same files over and over instead of storing anything.

Would be really awesome if there was something like this out there though even I could use this!
 
I'm sorry, but You said before that you're an engineer?
How then these weird questions, if You are really an engineer?
Mechanical engineer. Not computer engineer, sys admin, etc. You wouldn't expect an Optometrist with a Doctorate to be able to operate on a heart just because he's a doctor - meaning there's specializes within each type of doctorate - just like engineering.

Hi @strollin

Thanks your reply. I don't need to upload my Windows setup as it is right now. I don't mind starting from scratch on that Virtual Server/Machine and installing everything there.

I just wish that, once everything is installed on that Virtual Server, that then I could access that environment using a different computer, for example, with having to install all my applications on all those computers.

Does that make sense?

Sounds like an Azure VM is what you want:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/windows/

However...they're not free, and wouldn't be cost-effective really to use as your "main" OS.

You could use it as a "backup-OS" however, and have your files/resources available on the cloud, and then could switch over to the Azure VM.
 
Hi @strollin

Thanks your reply. I don't need to upload my Windows setup as it is right now. I don't mind starting from scratch on that Virtual Server/Machine and installing everything there.

I just wish that, once everything is installed on that Virtual Server, that then I could access that environment using a different computer, for example, with having to install all my applications on all those computers.

Does that make sense?

It is entirely possible to access a VM remotely so you could have a machine setup with your VM (or even multiple VMs if needed) and access it remotely. For most cases, a VM works just like a physical machine.

I am a recently retired software engineer and used VMs extensively to test software on various platforms. I had VMs that ran XP, Vista, Win 7, Win 8 and Win 10. I had 32 and 64 bit versions of each. Also with different versions of Office. Also had VMs in different languages such as English, Spanish, French, German, etc... Having actual physical machines to test all the various permutations would have been prohibitively expensive but with VMs it was much less expensive. It took some time to set up those different VMs but once setup, they could be used just like a physical machine.

VMs also have the ability to take "snapshots" which is similar to system backup/restore in Windows. You can take a snapshot of the VM, install new software, test it, find out it buggers the system, then jump back to the last snapshot (or even an earlier one). You could even jump forward again if you so desired.
 
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