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Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

workstream.paperspace.com

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Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#201

Post by Havoc »

catblast wrote: post #141
ChuckMcM wrote: post #140

First, that is a pretty nice web site. The notion of this sort of virtual computer goes back a ways, the one thing I keep expecting to see but haven't yet is a fully encrypted experience where the "cloud" bits don't work unless the user's local display has a security token attached. My first experience with type of architecture was in the 80's with something called an "X terminal". All the same elements, a machine wi…

Citrix imploded? That’s news to me. It’s pretty much an industry standard in US healthcare.

Some things just won’t die. Even if they should perhaps

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#202

Post by Havoc »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #192

I'm curious about something because I'm working on a side project that's "in the area". How does workstream, or indeed any remote computing provider, handle the possibility of people using their service to attack other computers, or to store/transfer extremely illegal data? They're not exactly running KYC identification.

There are probably easier and cheaper way to do that.

All sorts of player offer storage without kyc and for attacks this isn’t really what you’d want either

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#203

Post by jcrawfordor »

I was pretty excited to give this a try because it might be a good fit for some frustrations I've had with running a GPU-dependent task on my laptop without discrete graphics.

Onboarding experience is terrible. Registered for an account from the Workstream page linked here, and was taken to a console with absolutely no mention of Workstream. Went back and forth a few times trying to figure out if auth provider had redirected to the wrong page after registration only. Ultimately searched through comments here to find out that Workstream is a variant of the CORE product. Having figured that out, went to the Core product, was rejected on creating an instance due to no payment on file. Not a huge issue, but would have been nice if I was prompted up front to complete this. Once I'm past that hurdle, I go back to the CORE product and find out that I'm not allowed to create GPU instances until I put in a ticket.

I'm hoping that this was some accident where this landing page ended up on HN when it wasn't supposed to be public knowledge yet, otherwise the lack of thought on just the setup process here is pretty concerning. I'm also pretty confused at the requirement that I put in a ticket to have GPU instances enabled when they've already taken payment info, and it seems like a test auth would be a better anti-fraud measure than the half-sentence I typed in.

Man, my excitement here sure was short lived.

Edit: got an email that I had been enabled. went to look. Three of the GPU types still show as locked but one no longer shows the lock icon, so I guess approvals are per-type? But I can't select the "unlocked" GPU type, it's disabled. There's no explanation of why. A couple of minutes of trying different combinations and I find out that it's due to the DC, if I choose a different DC I can select it. So I guess they're only available in one DC, at least right now? It would have been nice to be told that.

Edit: got the machine to provision, installed the client from another HN comment. I logged into Paperspace using a Google account. The client does not list this as an option. Only email, github, AD, and SAML. I give up. Except for the machine is still provisioning and I have paid $10 for storage. Great.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#204

Post by fataliss »

Havoc wrote: post #200
fataliss wrote: post #132

Anybody used it for gaming? I was a beta user of the Nvidia service which is dedicated to gaming and while overall acceptable, lag spikes would render the use of the platform really frustrating. Everything would be smooth for 30s and then "lag" or freeze for up to 1-2s and then resume. Fine if playing the sims, but when you are in a fight in fast paced games it's a deal breaker. To my knowledge, so far, no platform h…

Pretty sure you’ll get far better results with actual cloud gaming providers

My issue with "traditional" cloud gaming providers of the like of Nvidia (on top of non stellar perfs), is they they have a limited catalog and offer no system control. I like to play old games that only run on windows and could therefore use a service like workstream. (Currently playing Warhammer online which requires dx9 so unless you have a way to manually install old drivers etc you can't really play)

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#205

Post by tonyhb »

fataliss wrote: post #132

Anybody used it for gaming? I was a beta user of the Nvidia service which is dedicated to gaming and while overall acceptable, lag spikes would render the use of the platform really frustrating. Everything would be smooth for 30s and then "lag" or freeze for up to 1-2s and then resume. Fine if playing the sims, but when you are in a fight in fast paced games it's a deal breaker. To my knowledge, so far, no platform h…

Yeah. I use it for work (healthcare, 3D simulations, GPU, our own custom apps for treatment planning) and also for gaming. Would recommend with Parsec.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#206

Post by zaptheimpaler »

As a computer-savvy dev, i feel like its hard to beat building your own given how cheap & powerful desktops are today, and how good software is.

Workstream specs are - 6 CPU, 16GB RAM, 2GB graphics card, 256GB SSD.

You could build a desktop beating that for around $800 today - including a Ryzen 3600, motherboard, case, better GPU etc. At $0.18/hr for Workstream, that means after just 44 hours you breakeven on building your own machine.

With a little extra work on setting up VNC/RDP/Parsec you can then access this desktop from anywhere. I already do this and it works great for the most part. The streaming app/protocol is key, and thanks to teams like Parsec and Moonlight we have high quality software doing this for free.

----

But given their target market, this does look really cool. Amazon Workspaces costs 3x-4x more for comparable machines with Windows. Paperspace looks like its offering OSX and some good bundled software for designers, VFX etc.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#207

Post by andy47 »

dkobran wrote: post #10
hedgehog wrote: post #7

It doesn't look like this is launched yet, at least I don't see it when I log in. I've been happy with their notebook product Gradient though, and it will be interesting to see if latency is good enough for this to replace some local desktop usage.

Sorry for the confusion here, we are in the midst of separating out the two products and this is not reflected everywhere yet. Under the CORE section of the interface, you'll find these instances and you can download the desktop app here: https://paperspace.com/download

But under your core product the only options for running Windows or Ubuntu are server instances. From what I can see I can't run a graphical desktop on top of your Ubuntu VMs.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#208

Post by marbogast40 »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #206

As a computer-savvy dev, i feel like its hard to beat building your own given how cheap & powerful desktops are today, and how good software is. Workstream specs are - 6 CPU, 16GB RAM, 2GB graphics card, 256GB SSD. You could build a desktop beating that for around $800 today - including a Ryzen 3600, motherboard, case, better GPU etc. At $0.18/hr for Workstream, that means after just 44 hours you breakeven on buildin…

$800 / $0.18 per hour = 4444.4 hours

I think you did: $800 / $18 per hour = 44 hours

Pretty big difference! Curious, does this change your value assessment?

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#209

Post by xupybd »

spiritplumber wrote: post #198
DTE wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEO of Paperspace here. I'm really sorry about this. That is not the experience that we are striving for and FWIW, since leaving beta, Gradient is much more mature at this point (many millions of hours of runtime and lots of developer work). We have been aggressively stabilizing (and building out new features) over the past few years and continue to improve the product every release. My sincerest apologies for your n…

Hey, I'm old and operate in a space where most things run at single Mhz speed (but have to work underwater, in a vacuum, and other interesting places). What does your service do? Is it like VNCing into my dev box in the shop, except (I hope) more responsive?

That sounds really interesting. Where do you work?

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#210

Post by epicide »

Aeolun wrote: post #151
woah wrote: post #78

I've used Paperspace's Gradient product (hosted Jupyter notebooks), and while it is cheaper than most other options, I can't recommend it. The service has a very janky feel. When I first started, there was an issue where my instance was was stuck "shutting down" for half an hour or more and I couldn't access my code. Then there was a weird issue where some kind of geographical split between different types of instanc…

Lol, yeah, I had the same issue. Followed their advertising for ‘gaming in the cloud’, only to find out that the VM’s with GPU’s were disabled. Not going to do any gaming without a GPU guys. Eventually they enabled them, but it was such a pointless experience that I was completely turned off using it.

I basically had the opposite experience.

Not sure when you tried their service, but I think I started around... probably a year ago? Maybe a bit more.

After I created my account, I had to specifically request access to GPU plans. Once I got approval (1-2 business days), I was able to connect to a machine with their web client, set up Parsec, and get a decent cloud-based gaming experience.

Round trip latency was usually less than 50ms, which was tolerable by my eyes for a lot of games. Something like an FPS was of course out of the question.

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