Thin clients..

(No - not WeightWatchers!)

I've been asked to look at using thin clients here and my only
experience is a bit of Citrix (4 years ago!) and unix-type X terminals.
Anyone got any experience with setting up thin client access to
Microsoft Server?

Phil

 

snip...

How many users? what flavour of windows? and what are you trying to
publish?

As far as I know.......

If you are pulishing heavy content, eg streaming video or CAD software
then use citrix as you can publish and get the host to do the
processing and not load-up the server, if it is just simple stuff eg
ms-office and email then go with terminal services.

Terminal services is pretty quick to setup and if the clients you are
using are XP pro (not sure about vista) then each XP pro machine has
an inbuilt licence for Terminal Services (otherwise a CAL is £60) so
you will only need to buy a license for the server itself. Citrix is
more involving to install but has a lot more flexability and
management.

HTH

 

Terminal services is pretty quick to setup and if the clients you are

Bit out of date mate.. Just to keep you all ligit

"A. Every Windows XP Professional license purchased or owned before April
24, 2003, is eligible for a complimentary Windows Server 2003 TS CAL. Note
that the Windows XP Professional license does not have to be installed as of
April 24, 2003, to qualify. The product must simply be owned by that date."

Sourced from:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/howtobuy/licensing/tscaltransfaq.mspx

Didn't realize the cals where that expensive. In education they are alot
less.

Cheers

Tim

 

25 (ish) users. All (currently) using XP but I'm happy to move them
onto something else (and the move to thin client devices is pretty much
mandated in the brief).
Servers are (at the moment) running 2000 Server and 2003. I'd need to
buy a new server as my current crop are hardly current models..

Nope - non of that in use here. We do have a number of developers and
support people who will need to access local USB and printer ports.

I'm looking at chucking out the current desktops in order to deploy
thin client hardware (bossman wants to save on our huge energy bill).

Phil.

 

Then defo have a look at SunRay(2).
http://www.sun.com/desktop/index.jsp?tab=1

 

I'm looking at chucking out the current desktops in order to deploy

Doesn't he realise that you'll just shift the processing (and hence energy)
consumption to the server? You still need to power a screen and the (thin)
clients CPU and other circuitry. Might be easier to implement a power
management policy on all the pc's, especially if it's only 25 of them.

You could do that manually one PC at a time or (if I remember correctly)
there is a power management AD policy tool out there that I found about a
year ago. I think it was on the Energy star website.

Here it is:

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_mgt_ez_gpo

And now Vista has new GPO's available for power management built in that can
be used in a W2K/W2K3 domain. Might be a worthwhile reason to upgrade to it,
provided all your apps will work on it and you are due to replace your pc's
due to policy/age reasons.

 

Ta.

Phil

 

Yes. But 1 server (500W power supply) uses a hell of a lot less power
that 25x350W PCs.

There is a power management policy - but you are still running stull
like a hard drive that you don't on thin clients.

I've seen a power comparison between a thin-client and a PC - thin
client used (on average) 20W as opposed to the 200W average of the PC.

We'll get Vista here over my cold, dead body. We have it running on
some VMWare machines in order to test our products under Vista and
that's as close as it'll get unless something changes radically with
Vista (or my boss mandates it!).

Especially as even the most recent PC's we have bought won't run Aero..
so only Vista Business Basic.

They don't.. And neither will the Magicard printers that we use all the
time.

Phil

 

Yes. But 1 server (500W power supply) uses a hell of a lot less power

I didn't think of it like that, also when somebody isn't using their
'virtual machine the processing capacity is available for others to use. How
long is your break even time?

I did wonder what the difference was, I've never been able to find reliable
power consumption figures for real world mahcines. Everything that I have
seen has just had the PSU rating i.e. a peak power.

I know just what you mean about Vista, I have the same aversion to it after
trialling it for the third time on a brand new CAD workstation just before
it was released in Dec 2006 so that was the last release candidate build.
The machine was a Dual core 3+Ghz with 2Gb ram and an Nvidia Quadra
something graphics card. even with all the correct drivers it ran like a
pig, slower than Win XP on a 64/128Mb 2001/2002 vintage machine.

Next week I will have a new batch of Dell's at work this time 1 of them has
a Vista license for testing and we can downgrade that to XP if it causes
problems.

 

1-2 years.

Indeed. I can't remember where I got my calculations from (I've got a
vague memory of using the APC UPS power requirements calculator which
doesn't take the peak but the average..)

Phil

 

Yes. But 1 server (500W power supply) uses a hell of a lot less power

Hmmm, you've piqued my interest in thin clients again. I must do some number
crunching to see what our potential power savings would be. We are a
manufacturing co. with about 80 seats only 5 of which (apart from laptops)
needs local processing power (CAD), so that'd be about 60 pc's.

Mind you it's not going to be that big a dent in the 'leccy bill; we have
great big electrically powered autoclaves that run 15 hours a day 5 days a
week, but every little helps!

It should also help out with software licensing, and the need to install
apps on every pc.

Do you mind if I drop you a line (e-mail) to see how this goes for you, and
to ask about the hardware you end up using and are now using?

 

Thin clients do have their downside though:

Network bandwidth (although Windows itself is pretty chatty in that
regard too)
Single point of failure (server - although this can be mitigated
through clustering and load balancing)

The upside:

Replaceable desk units - if a unit dies no more having to rebuild a PC
and transfer over data - just replace the thin client
Stops people installing crap!
Power efficiency

Basically it's going back to my original home - mainframes..

Indeed. Our main usage is gas (we have an oxydiser that burns off all
the manufacturing solvents - it runs at 600C and takes 5 days to come
up to temperature. Cost is about £80/k in gas..

Indeed. And patching - you now only have to patch the server OS to keep
it up to date. The flipside is that a vulnerability affects *all* the
users simulaneously.

Feel free - it's gone on the back-burner for the moment while I deal
with some more pressing issues..

Phil

 

Do you mind if I drop you a line (e-mail) to see how this goes for you,
and

Thanks, I will in a couple of weeks once I have had a look at our setup and
done some number crunching.