Manage a PC Pool
Manage a PC Pool
Hello, I’m planning to start a small business similar to renting gaming PCs, much like cybercoffee I’d love to offer. I need guidance on setting this up—what software should I consider? Whether I subscribe or purchase, the goal is to manage a network of 20+ gaming computers and one admin who handles customer accounts and rental times. Everything should work within a local network. Here’s how it should work:
1. A customer visits, and I create their login account.
2. They pay for a time slot, say an hour, then use the PC they want.
3. After logging in, they can use the machine until the timer ends.
4. If they need more time, they can extend it by another hour or 15 minutes through the management system.
5. When the time runs out, the software automatically logs them out.
6. I’d like a solution that integrates with the default Windows desktop and restricts access to only what I define as admin permissions—like game launchers or other tools.
7. For customers needing Wi-Fi access via phones, tablets, or laptops, I want a web-based firewall that supports these devices and offers similar features.
Thank you for your time and support!
First thing you need to know before you even open such business, is if there's a good demand on them. On my country, 3 of 5 internet cafes closed permanently simply because there's no demand here since mobile gaming is a thing. Of what I said below is of what I think. I never opened a business like so, but I certainly, at least, know how it works. You'll need a pick of 'internet cafe software' / 'PC billing software' (Google it), for the customer to get vouchers per-time needed. Unfortunately, I can't give you a recommendation on which one simply because on every country the software availability would be different on each other. For the PCs, I recommend you to use diskless PC. So each PC got it's main components; CPU, RAM, motherboard, decent cooling, and GPU, but no need any storage device like HDD or SSD on there, all of that came from a diskless server. It simplify a lot of things as you only need one server PC to store all of that game data, and cost-effectively reducing unnecessary unused disk space. You'll need a 24 or even 48 port gigabit ( has to be a gigabit , not less) switch, get the decent one, probably something with VLAN capability because you'll use wi-fi either, and we definitely need to isolate between wifi to cafe PC clients. Cat 6 cable would be nice for the sake of reliability, and, of course of all that, all of the client PCs need gigabit LAN. Make sure the server have a decent spec, otherwise the client will suffer of bottleneck. I recommend you to use SATA (or even NVME) SSDs to store the game data. 2 TB worth of game drive ought to be enough. Try to get RAID0 (assuming you'd go for 2 TB total, so two 1 TB SATA SSD drive) on it as so to increase performance and reducing the possibility of bottleneck. The main disadvantage of this, of course, if the local network's down or the server's down, all of your client's down. So make sure to put all the good effort to make sure the server are always on working order. But of so far of my past years ago playin' on internet cafes (and all of them using diskless approach, and yes, I actually 'spied' on how they works lol), CCBoot is the one good pick for diskless PC environment, lots of cafes here use that too. https://www.ccboot.com That company offers a billing software either, which is https://www.icafecloud.com . Never used it tho, so can't tell of how good it is. For this, put some decent AP (like, commercial grade like Ubiquiti's, not those puny 2 antenna home-grade APs) since you definitely will get a lot of wireless clients there. Isolate the connection between clients (all of them) as to prevent someone snooping on someone else data while they're got connected. Use the voucher method either for the clients, and probably limit the speed for each client if your bandwidth from the ISP can't cope them all. On the more details of how the networking works, unfortunately, I can't tell you much than to get professional help to set it up. But the point of what I can get: