An effective tool for specific tasks
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Amazon WorkSpaces saves a lot of time as it provides a isolated virtual desktop. Our main challenge was testing applications on on different java, cmd, powershell etc. and upgrading/degrading to its particular required version was like a nightmare, it created conflicts and broke the normal use of local machine earlier. Amazon WorkSpaces completely solve this, we can now freely configure our WorkSpace as per our requirement.
Pros
- It gives us a virtual desktop machine which is completely configurable.
- We can launch and terminate those machines as per our requirements
- It eliminates software conflicts as we get clean system every time on launch
Cons
- Idle Timeout should be configurable. If I forgot to switch off the WorkSpace, it continuously running and charging for that as well.
- As an admin, there is no way to simply push the updates to all available WorkSpaces simultaneously. To achieve that we need to create golden image with patches and recreate workspaces for all the users which is time consuming.
- WorkSpace of performance tier can't handle even light video editing. Slow rendering and significant lag can be seen all the time.
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited scenarios: Let suppose a startup company wants to save cost of hardware and allow their employees use their own system but concerned about the security of their data then they can just use Amazon WorkSpaces on which an user can just login and access the virtual desktop over internet to do their assigned work. Less appropriate situation: The users will feel lag while doing high end creative work or render video for editing. Even with more expensive GPU enabled instances, the performance doesn't match the local system performance as connecting to Amazon WorkSpaces always depends on the network bandwidth as well.