Hi all,
Just an enquiry - company has a few solidworks users and I have been approached to setup some hardware for a PDM server (not sure on which version exactly so lets call it standard).
I've got a few questions on usability and setup that I am hoping experienced users can help with.
1) Can the setup be installed and work perfectly fine on a Windows 10 box, rather than Server 2016/2019? I assume it can, but are there any things that wouldn't work, any really usable details that wouldn't work?
2) I'd like to virtualise if possible, officially VMWare 6.5 is supported, but has anyone run this on Hyper-V Core or KVM/Proxmox, vSphere 7? Any gotchas to know about? Any major cons?
3) Is a lack of Active Directory (AD) a problem as long as there is user access? how are user accounts managed in PDM or are they read from Local Machine? Does it complicate the setup at all?
4) Solidworks file data is currently kept on a reasonably speedy NAS, it is likely not to be co-located with PDM (unless this is massively beneficial or required). Does anyone run a setup like this?
5) Assuming no server side rendering takes place, so the server won't need a workstation GPU, or does it?
6) I read a specification document that details two drives, one with PDM and some other componenets (SQL) and the 2nd for archive server - I assume this is for performance purposes.
7) Assuming there is no issue with using this over a VPN setup for remote workers, or providing the web interface if I really needed to outside of the VPN? Any access issues?
8) Finally how do you backup - I was hoping to use virtualisation to simplify this and just take a whole virtual machine backup but with SQL thrown into the mix i' assuming there is a definitive "correct way".
Apologies if some of these seem quite basic, i've just been handed a product spec sheet and It doesn't contain any details of any of this, i've read a few documents and watched some videos but it seems more focused on someone who is a solidworks user than someoe who has to manage the systems/data setup.
We are going to get a specialist to install it - but I want to have a good base setup ready to take the install and avoid issues on the day. We still have time to change spec/os/some supporting software stack at this time.
Thanks in advance.