Creating a Reproducible Remote Desktop with Terraform
Desk Dance
© Photo by Nat Weerawong on Unsplash
The Terraform orchestration tool lets you create a remote desktop configuration that you can easily bring up and tear down, which could save you money and add flexibility to your environment.
The concept of a remote desktop has been around for a long time. The idea is to store a regular desktop configuration on some remote server and let the user connect to it using a remote desktop tool like RDP or VNC. One common approach is to set up a physical server with beefy hardware and then provide a connection to it from a thin client. This option has many downsides, such as the possibility of hardware issues or electrical outages.
An alternative approach is to treat your remote desktop the same way you treat cloud resources – that is, building it on demand and using it only when you actually need it. This solution is certainly cheaper than running RDP 24/7. Plus, the fact that the desktop only exists when you need it also reduces the possibility of a cyberattack. An added advantage is that building on demand lets you scale vertically within minutes.
I wanted a remote desktop that could be quickly created and destroyed, but with a state that persisted between the sessions. Some more specific requirements included:
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