Question Huge cyber cafe problem

[Fye]

Hello everyone, I hope I'm in the right section.

So my friends and I started out cyber cafe and we are 2 weeks and a half in already, but we are facing major problems with games updates because we have 79 PCs and it's endless work to update them 1 by 1. So my question is: is it possible for us to auto update everything at the same time? note: we use GGLeap.

Here's what I found so far:
1. There's few softwares that can update everything with one click like https://michaelsoft.com.my/auto-game-update/ from Michael soft, an app that detect all games and update them by one click(requires payment for each pc) but the website says its only supported in SE Asian countries.

2. I've read about "Diskless PC" and what I understood from that is I have 1 PC that acts like a server that has the games I have on every other PC, and when I update the games in the server PC all other PCs will update.

I really like the second one but I don't have much experience about it but I'm interested. If you please can tell me about how can I set it up, what are the downsides and upsides of this solution.

Thank you <3.

 

[USAFRet]

Download all your updates to a central server. Then, update your systems on your own schedule.

Or, have a couple of Image PC's. Same configuration as your client systems. Update those, and then push the image out to all your client systems.

Your #2 is problematic for any major gaming. For office level use, it is possible.
Games, not so much.


Running a high performance network of 80+ systems is not a trivial task. It takes planning, and daily maintenance.

 

[kanewolf]

Running a high performance network of 80+ systems is not a trivial task. It takes planning, and daily maintenance.

Unfortunately, it is more likely middle of the night maintenance.
You probably also want to think about keeping 2 - 5 machines in "maintenance" status every day. That provides you with a replacement if one of your active machines fails. It also gives you time to do more in depth support.

 

[boju]

I see steam offers a service for this but not sure if it's what you want as id assume you'd have games on other platforms like origin. Ea may have something similar?

Not sure if steam cyber cafe is region limited

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3303-QWRC-3436&l=dutch

 

[koortt]

Hi there is interesting articale - https://www.antamedia.com/articles/free-tips-for-successful-internet-cafe-business/

 

[Fye]

Your #2 is problematic for any major gaming. For office level use, it is possible.
Games, not so much.


Running a high performance network of 80+ systems is not a trivial task. It takes planning, and daily maintenance.

Hi, thank you for your reply.

Well what we are trying to do is not stream data from a PC or two to 80, but what we are trying to do is just before opening we use those diskless PCs just to push updates, thats all. I've contacted Michael soft yesterday and I got this reply
"

Kevin: When you want to make changes to image, just set one of the PC as admin, then save the image once done. The rest of the PCs need a restart will get latest update
[01:55]	Kevin: You will no more facing individual PC harddisk corrupt format n reinstall. Will save lots of time by doing those tedious jobs
[01:55]	Fye: that one I feel, as we are still suffering from this

"

and this is what we are looking for, and it turned out that the SE Asian countries I mentioned before, is the countries where they offer manual setup.

 

[USAFRet]

Well what we are trying to do is not stream data from a PC or two to 80, but what we are trying to do is just before opening we use those diskless PCs just to push updates, thats all. I've contacted Michael soft yesterday and I got this reply

That is exactly what it is doing.
Making a couple of systems the baseline, and pushing (streaming) that baseline out to all the other systems.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Create a master image then mirror the hell out of it with hot swaps. I'm assuming you have legal licenses for all said software. This is also a good way to ensure that Trojans don't sit on your PC for too long.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827194050&Description=hard drive duplicator&cm_re=hard_drive_duplicator--27-194-050--Product

Acronis true image is another way to go.

The only disadvantage to this technique is you'll have to change the windows key for every PC by hand. You could have a program read the card MAC (which doesn't change) and go out and read the Security key for that machine on a network store, and put in the security key for you based on MAC and then activate that copy based on the MAC. You could do this by having a Process class bring up the windows activation windows, then set focus and the "sendKeys" command using the Windows Activation Key. The command for process is c:\windows\system32\slui.exe. It's about a day's programming task

If you clone twice a day 7 days a week, you are good to go by weeks end. (5 copies x 2 / day x 7 days)

You'll staff can do this passively during the week then just pull and replace the drives on a schedule like after closing on a Sunday.

 

[Fye]

Create a master image then mirror the hell out of it with hot swaps. I'm assuming you have legal licenses for all said software. This is also a good way to ensure that Trojans don't sit on your PC for too long.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827194050&Description=hard drive duplicator&cm_re=hard_drive_duplicator--27-194-050--Product

Acronis true image is another way to go.

The only disadvantage to this technique is you'll have to change the windows key for every PC by hand. You could have a program read the card MAC (which doesn't change) and go out and read the Security key for that machine on a network store, and put in the security key for you based on MAC and then activate that copy based on the MAC. You could do this by having a Process class bring up the windows activation windows, then set focus and the "sendKeys" command using the Windows Activation Key. The command for process is c:\windows\system32\slui.exe. It's about a day's programming task

If you clone twice a day 7 days a week, you are good to go by weeks end. (5 copies x 2 / day x 7 days)

You'll staff can do this passively during the week then just pull and replace the drives on a schedule like after closing on a Sunday.

We do have legal licenses for everything we use

thank you, that was very helpful, and we use ggleap which also keep record of all PCs IP addresses, MAC addresses.

 

[failboat]

ansible has modules for windows check that out.