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Operating Systems Software

Converting Desktops to Thin Clients? 110

Posted by Cliff from the cyclic-nature-of-IT dept.
tfiedler asks: "I manage about 3500 desktop computers and was recently asked by my CIO to begin looking into thin client computing, something like WYSE terminals. I'd like to know, what are some good functional, and more importantly, manageable options to convert existing desktop computers into what would essentially be a Citrix terminal? I was thinking some brand of Linux that starts up an X11 session, starts the Citrix client and connects to our server farm. The user would see a Windows logon, our apps would function as normal and I'd get the benefit of performing a LOT LESS client-side maintenance. Any suggestions?"
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Converting Desktops to Thin Clients? More

Converting Desktops to Thin Clients?

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  • sun ray's! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nova1313 ( 630547 ) * on Friday February 23, 2007 @07:50PM (#18129832)
    Check out sunrays. They are dirt cheap and they now have a windows version of the software. I use them at home they are really that easy to setup. We run a windows and a linux sunray server here. 2 Servers that I upgrade every 2 years and then we have about 10 terminals scattered throughout the house. I'm on one right now actually. It's a simple solution and fairly cheap to deploy.

    • I just got done reading the Sun Ray 2 Virtual Display Client FAQ and it didn't even mention what protocols it uses. Can you use this to connect to a regular old windows terminal (RDP) server? Doesn't look like it to me.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Nova1313 ( 630547 ) *
        no they don't connect to a terminal server. They use a propriatary protocol. You instead run sun's sunray server and then you get sound, usb devices, dual head support and access card use. I login to the main box and terminal server to anywhere else I need to go. I bought 2 of the sunrays brand new and the other 8 off ebay for like 20 bucks a pop. The brand new sunrays are the sunray 2's with dual head support. We originally used them where I went to school for my bachelors and I got into playing with the
        • Based on your experience how would these work in a cyber cafe setting?
          I like the smart card aspect. I assume they are configurable thus admin cards, vs. prepaid user cards? I know these wouldn't be useful for games, but I'm thinking a two tiered pricing? $24/hr for a gaming machine (or bring your own for lan parties) or $12/hr for a thin client. Think they'd do good enough for e-mail, IM, etc? Loving the statelessness for native AV properties...

          Likely be useful for the register terminal as well (third c
          • from my experience I've had 10 users on my home system and it's a crappy dual core server with 2 gigs of ram. It runs ubuntu and everyone on the network was running enlightenment. You can browse, edit, compile all at once without a problem. Graphics intensive stuff such as anything 3d and they started to chug. Flash works well though. Btw thats kinda expensive I know the cafe's by me you can get a gaming machine for 5 bucks an hour with all their games installed. As for the smart cards I've not played ar

    • Re:sun ray's! (Score:4, Informative)

      by apachetoolbox ( 456499 ) on Friday February 23, 2007 @08:24PM (#18130174) Homepage
      After a minute or two of googling I think the Wyse S10 are a better choice. They connect to RDP servers and only cost about $280.
      • That's a big price bump, though. Sun Ray I's are selling on eBay for $60 + $20 shipping (and that was Buy It Now, I suspect they even go for less via actual auctions). For one or two units, it might be easy enough to justify the difference, but if you were outfitting a lab or cafe, a 3x price difference upfront could be a no-go.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by dorath ( 939402 )
      Sun Ray Clients [sun.com].
    • Always selling!
      • haha no im just a recent grad who happened to go to a school (moravian.edu) which features a 98ish percent sun lab. Of which about 30 of the systems were sunrays. I was a big fan of the idea and we had entire classes pounding away on them. They do just fine for my home work. If you have people running cpu intensive applications all day I'm not so sure.. Most people in my house email and web browse and use open office. It works fine for that. So no I'm not Larry ^^

  • Not sure that's the way to go (Score:5, Insightful)

    by countach ( 534280 ) on Friday February 23, 2007 @07:52PM (#18129860)

    Even 20 years ago, we were using rdist on Solaris (or is it rsync?) to totally automate updating of clients, and then we were NFS mounting the home directories, so that they are on the server and backed up. So you get most of the benefits of local computing with local CPU etc, and the benefits of no client maintenance because it's all automated and the home directories are backed up. Why does Windows make it so hard?
    • Disposable clients not thin clients are the answer for manageability. The cost savings of opting for a truly non-capable display-only device over a competent computer is essentially non-existent. Trying to pack all your processing overhead and memory into a centralized place will more than offset any perceived client-side savings. If you plan for it and can use the right tools, you should be able to go from an unconfigured blank system to a fully functional system with access to any arbitrary users data

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by pogson ( 856666 )
        I disagree strongly with this statement:"The cost savings of opting for a truly non-capable display-only device over a competent computer is essentially non-existent."

        With Windows it is true, because Bill charges per-seat. With Linux you get about 66% discount per seat. The cheap thin client box may cost only $150 USD. You pay Bill more than that in licences.

        I recently equipped a whole school with thin clients in every room and we got twices as many seats as we could have afforded with that other OS and the

  • City of Largo (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Dave Richards, sysadmin for the City of Largo, Florida [blogspot.com] has been documenting some of his work with choosing and setting up thin-clients.

    They have a server for each application (Firefox, OO.org, GNOME, etc) and use HP thin clients (set to be in use for 10 years), and manage to provide a great service, including all the new fancy XGL-like effects.

  • Linux terminal servers (Score:5, Informative)

    by vinsci ( 537958 ) on Friday February 23, 2007 @07:53PM (#18129870) Journal
    You're may be looking for the Linux Terminal Server Project [ltsp.org].

    • We use this (Score:5, Interesting)

      by phorm ( 591458 ) on Friday February 23, 2007 @08:06PM (#18130012) Journal
      We use this where I work.

      Essentially we have little sub-1Ghz client boxes with 512MB RAM and no hard drive. They boot off ethernet via PXE, grabbing a kernel and then mounting the root filesystem etc via NFS.

      Newer setups have the client files in a vserver (google util-vserv) which allows for some convenience in seperating the server's components and those for the clients.

      Some apps run locally on the client's processor/RAM, while others are run remotely "ssh -X" with the GUI piped back.

      I'm trying to setup something similar at home, with a server image that should allow friends to connect and use 'nix while at my house (for rounds of frozen bubble, or whatever). You could email me (form on my website) if you want more info.
    • You've already spent money on PCs for everybody. At least for desktop users, LTSP gives you a way to keep using those machines for a long time, after you would have otherwise junked them. It wouldn't work in my environment - 98% of my organization uses laptops, because we work in the field and from home as well as from our offices - but if you're working from a desk, it's fine.

      You'll still need servers, of course, and your servers will need upgrading, but it's a lot more concentrated and efficient.

  • If the desktop computers have network adapters that support booting from the network, you can use PXE to turn the machine into a thin-client.

    There is an excellent free utility for setting up the boot image to load from a TFTP server called ThinStation [sourceforge.net]

    We have a remote office where I work where everyone connects to a Win2K3 server with Terminal Services. I suggested PXE as a method of connecting rather than having a full-blown copy of Win2K installed just to run the TS client on boot. It worked great but as
    • Tell me have you ever PXE booted 3500 desktop computers on your network before? Maybe this works in a datacenter on a secondary network, but not on the main client network.

  • No (Score:5, Funny)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Friday February 23, 2007 @07:59PM (#18129940) Homepage Journal
    Thin computing is a buzzword companies throw around when the balance sheet is drifting into the red and the CEO doesn't want to give up the corporate jet. Ultimately the latencies are unacceptable, network outages paralize your entire company, and unless you're doing a lot of stuff that does't require computers in the first place the entire effort will not only fail, it will fail miserably. Look at ANY company that has attempted to deploy graphical thin clients and you will find nothing but failure. The guys at Sun will try to tell you that they have thin clients and it works great but this is not true. All the guys who do real work at the company have either laptops or SunFire machines on their desks.

    Here's a suggestion straight from the BOFH that might work though; Spin off a company to test the citrix rollout. After a couple of weeks of using citrix anyone who finds it acceptable gets moved to the new company. Then mismanage the new company into bankruptcy. You'll have gotten rid of most of the deadwood at your company and the citrix rollout will die the ignomious death it so richly deserves.

    • With the equipment available in this day and age, really thin computing where the desk local equipment does nothing but citrix/rdp/vnc/x forward from a server doing all the work doesn't usually make sense. As you say, doing all that stuff in a centralized way will be suboptimal and latencies annoying. You may be able to get the work done, but do not think for a minute your overall productivity and expense will go as you want them to.

      The other end of the spectrum, everyone installing local applications and
    • My company decided to do that, but only for certain people who didn't need the computing power. Developers and graphic artists and people who did stuff like that kept their desktop PCs. I think we used some sort of blade servers, but I don't recall the brand. However, I do know that nearly everyone I've talked to who used them just hated them...there reports of unacceptable latencies, the inability to work when there was a network glitch, etc.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Sea Monkey ( 17550 )
      We successful used Sunrays with no issues for 2.5 years doing hardware design. I don't buy your argument. Other than that Citrix sucks.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 )
      I dunno. No question that thin clients aren't going to work well for laptops and other offline scenarios. However, in many global companies a huge number of enterprise apps are moving in the direction of Citrix anyway - so they already need to maintain an airtight network or they're out of commission.

      Why are they moving to Citrix? Simple - most client-server apps don't handle high latencies like you find in a WAN. All those database round-trips kill performance when you have 250ms latency. The only sol
      • Simple - most client-server apps don't handle high latencies like you find in a WAN. All those database round-trips kill performance when you have 250ms latency.

        I would argue that that's only true if qualified as "most poorly-written client-server apps". There is a plague of "enterprise" software vendors out there who can't be bothered to develop decent software and use Citrix or terminal services in general as a magic bullet to make up for their incompetent application design. I am looking at you, Merant o
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rich0 ( 548339 )
          I would argue that that's only true if qualified as "most poorly-written client-server apps".

          I would argue that "most poorly-written client-server apps" == "most client-server apps", so I both agree and disagree with you... :)

          You know what the solution is? It's not thin clients or some other buzzword. It's for big corporations to stop buying shitty software.

          Go ahead and start writing it and I'm sure we'll all flock to buy it. :)

          Microsoft gets a bad rap sometimes, but they are a billion times better than "en
    • I have planned and deployed thin clients across local and wide area networks and all have been successful. While the situations you describe can happen, they can be easily avoided with proper planning.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Demon10000 ( 566536 )
      I'm going to call shenanigans on this.

      I'm employed by a company that has approximately 5000 users. A few years ago, we had about 80% Desktops and 20% thin clients. These days, we're about 20% Desktops and 80% thin clients, and both the Technicians and our users couldn't be happier.

      The difference between a Citrix implementation failing, and working successfully is knowing the technology that you're working with. You can't have an application thats going to go rouge and take down your server with 50 users

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Ultimately the latencies are unacceptable, network outages paralize your entire company, "

      We're already paralyzed when we have a network outage. Even the laptops become expensive bricks without a connection of some kind.

      Don't take my word for it. Do the math. How many apps at your work need a network? I'll give you a starter list.

      any corporate database
      email
      time sheets
      booking travel
      instant messaging
      phones (got VOIP?)
      payroll
      every other accounting function
      CRM
      everything you do collaboratively
      file sharing (
      • Mod parent up. A while ago, I was at work when The Network Went Out. It really drove home how useless we all were without data service. People stood around at their desks, rebooted, etc., for the first five minutes, and then proceeded to take coffee breaks / mill around the water cooler / shuffle dead-tree papers. Eventually, people went out to lunch. When it became evident that things weren't coming up again soon, everyone just packed up and went home.

        Without the network, everything just stopped. No emai

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pnutjam ( 523990 )
      I beg to differ with you. I work for a Mental Health company with about 250 employees. We have one site with about 100 users, 5 sites w/ 20+/- users, and over a dozen sites with less then 3 users. We have a three person IT department.

      There is no way this would work without thin client. Most of our locations use either a direct T1 or residential internet service w/ an IPsec VPN. Some of our sites need computers to handle a dynamic VPN. These sites are way more trouble then the sites with thin clien

  • Try pxes (Score:4, Informative)

    by sfire ( 175775 ) * on Friday February 23, 2007 @08:18PM (#18130118)
    Try PXES [2x.com]. I used it at a high school to netboot old desktops ( I think I used etherboot, with all nics embedded, so it didn't matter what nic was in the desktop), to download pxes, which would then connect to the X11 box to run all the applications. It features [2x.com] RDP, X11, NX, and others perhaps.Download here [2x.com].
    • A smarter way to do it if you are going to run PXES is to just put RDP or Citrix support in your TFTP image and connect straight through. There is no reason to connect X11 to a machine and then RDP to a windows machine. That is a common mistake people make when setting this up.

      We use PXES .9 I think (not the X2 version) and it works great. I can't comment on X2 as I have never used it, but I setup .8 about 3 years ago and upgraded it to .9 whenever it came out. I haven't touched it since. We just add n
  • Basically you're talking about running tsclient [freshmeat.net] on some Linux distro. Since you don't care about local capabilities, pick the lightest and fastest booting distro using the lightest window manager, or no window manager at all. Tsclient will run in full screen mode, so on a LAN it will feel pretty much like Windows.

    Awkwardness will set in at the intersection of the remote world and local resources: while local storage (e.g. USB flash drives to take out/bring in data) may not be a big issue, printers sooner or
  • Our problem here is that our main accounting app is on a unix box and we use a terminal emulator to access. However our vendors have the purchasing info/programs on the web, and pretty sure AT LEAST one requires IE. Thus we need windows underneath. It was pretty disturbing to realize we need a Hyperthreading Pentium 4 or better to efficiantly emulate a DUMB terminal under windows or the firewall/AV chokes the response rate too much :(

    We use a web browser, a DOS billing program(that requires Windows installe

    • We use a web browser, a DOS billing program(that requires Windows installer to load!!...i was gonna build a DOS network with old computers for this part since they are isolated and the program came from a 386-25, damnit)

      Nothing like setting up a network of (probably) outdated crap, on an OS thats not supported and that virtually none of the entry level desktop techs that your company would be hiring can support... sounds like its gotten "success story" written all over it.

      Nothing like finding out a Dumb ter

    • "However our vendors have the purchasing info/programs on the web, and pretty sure AT LEAST one requires IE. Thus we need windows underneath."

      You no longer need Windows to run Internet Explorer - it runs fine under linux [tatanka.com.br] .

      What is IEs4Linux?

      IEs4Linux is the simpler way to have Microsoft Internet Explorer running on Linux (or any OS running Wine).

      No clicks needed. No boring setup processes. No Wine complications. Just one easy script and you'll get three IE versions to test your Sites. And it's free

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Scoth ( 879800 )
        My company runs an ActiveX IE Only ickified CRM (Siebel 7.7 thin client). I've spent quite a bit of time experimenting with ies4linux, Crossover, winetools, and a couple other IE in Linux setups. It mostly works - probably 90-95% of it. But that last 5-10% is the problem. It tends to randomly freeze up, crash, or otherwise malfunction. And, unfortunately, without 100% compatibility, there's no hope of ever having Linux replace Windows for good. It's a shame too, I've gotten a couple other apps we use to wor
        • And let that be a warning to anyone considering buying anything that only works on one platform.

          Organisations that would never even consider allowing themselves to be locked into a single vendor for anything else, happily do so with IT.
  • Admittedly, this is the higher-end solution, but since you have 3500 desktops, I don't think it's unreasonable to think you already have or can get the infrastructure.

    Using iSCSI or fibre channel, configure the NIC or HBA to boot from a pre-assigned lun. All of your backup worries vanish, because you are already backing up your storage arrays, and there's no local disk to fail. At the very least, there's disk redundancy.

    Taking it even further, make all these desktops 1Us in a data center and use an Avocent
  • Look at the Crashing an In-Flight Entertainment System story that seem like it is run on some kind of thin client system.

  • VDI (Score:1)

    by Natales ( 182136 )
    Actually, what you describe seems to be gaining a lot of popularity lately. CIOs already got the picture that managing PC endpoints is a nightmare, so I guess it makes sense to put them back in the datacenter, either by using physical PC Blades (still expensive), or a shared solution (such as Citrix or X-based desktop sessions).

    The latest move, and the one I really like, is using virtual machines hosted in the datacenter. In that way, you can have a single VMware ESX server for example with let's say 40-60
  • I would suggest a hacksaw, a dremel, and some duct tape. Those should be able to make any desktop thinner.

  • Call your local citrix partner (Score:3, Insightful)

    by batkiwi ( 137781 ) on Friday February 23, 2007 @09:36PM (#18130646)
    What you're asking for is what the citrix-loaded WYSE terminals do automatically. You choose which model terminal (and which OS, they have both linux and windows based ones) and then set the level of local access (allow local apps, allow local USB drives, allow local streaming media, etc).

    You then set up your citrix farm and away it goes. You can either have a full session, so that the user thinks they're using windows on a workstation, or you can have each app running 1 by 1 as the user launches them from the terminal.

    Last I checked the terminals were about $200 each if you go with the linux ones since you skip having a windows license for the local box.
    • I wouldn't go with the full session, as you're going to need the same amount of memory as you would for a local OS (if not more). Piping back and forth between the server and client diminishes the user experience when the local memory starts to fill up. You can avoid this with a local hard drive, but if you're going to put a hard drive in anyways, why not include the local OS? Piping the apps individually is a good idea (and is what is done at my university), and can allow for a huge number of apps witho
    • And wouldn't it be nice to just install a CD and have them boot up as Xterms. The cost of 3000 CDs rather than 3000 new Wyse terminals.

       
  • Their biggest customers (i.e the Fortune 500 companies) are sick and tired of the cost of supporting locally-installed operating systems that they've put serious pressure on Microsoft to come up with a solution. In the not-too-distant future, there will be an "enterprise" version of Windows, where nothing is installed locally. Basically, you'll be able to sit down at any PC on your company's network, log in and your "profile" will be downloaded to the PC you're sat in front of - not just your desktop prefer

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by unDees ( 116113 )
      Wow, just like the old Sun workstations at school. The more things change....

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by pogson ( 856666 )
      Yes, XP/2003 does this kind of thing. A power user like me with gigabytes of files does not enjoy moving around in such a system. Synchronizing ...

      Give me LTSP or even a remote X session any day. My files stay on the server. Only pictures of their contents and my desktop follow me around. Makes a lot more sense.

      Moore's law increases the power you can put in boxes in the server room so rapidly that you do not even have to increase the size of the server room. Just keep upgrading the servers. A few years

  • I've been looking at some Mini ITX based Set top boxes been sold for £40 in odds and sods. Failing that you can get a very good solution using old Citrix Clients thrown out or sold for bugger all on Ebay. Neglecting the monitor my last Semperon 3000+ box was £80 all up with out the HDD. Basically the choices are legion.

  • Options (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23, 2007 @09:58PM (#18130806)
    Thin clients are supposed to lessen the management of PCs. All apps would reside on a central location and depending on your implementation, either run on a beefy central server or on local machines. The problem with the former is that you have a very expensive central server that's usually completely inadequate for desktop applications. Now this may work for the subset of users that don't need the traditional desktop tools. But in this case it would likely be cheaper to web-enable those critical apps or look at some of the web application suites (I think Google just released one).

    The problem with the latter (run on local machines) is that this is taking a PC and crippling its functionality. If your users' PCs are just glorified terminals then this is easy. If not you'll get all the cost of a PC and little of its benefits.

    If your boss insists on thin clients there are a few things you can try:

    1) Set up a fairly powerful server with vncserver instances with locked configurations.
    2) If you're trying to reduce PC maintenance, try running applications from a central server. This works for almost 6 different applications that don't require local registry settings.
    3) Take the PCs and throttle down the speed to 800MhZ to simulate running apps remotely. To be fair, only some apps will slowdown. These apps include those that require graphical output or user interaction.
    4) Replace your network. RFB is chatty and puts a tremendous load on your network. Simulate it by running all NICs at 10Mbit/half.
  • You don't specify in your question if all 3500 current PCs are local or distributed. As someone who currently supports multiple remote locations, furthest being about 3000 miles from our main data center, I would say this is a VERY important distinction. We use Windows Terminal Services hosted on multiple Windows 2003 servers to give access to some fairly basic but unique CRM functionality. We have more than enough horse-power for each user, and my local users love it. However, remote users who have hig

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by norkakn ( 102380 )
      Why don't you go to fibre? (disclaimer: I'm not the netadmin and I may be full of shit) I think we just negotiated with Time Warner Telecom for 25Mb at about $1000 a month. Prices have gone down a lot, maybe you can get a better deal?

  • Citrix is a last resort (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Citrix's main (and some would argue only) benefit is the ability to minimize the hassle of dealing with poorly written, bloated "enterprise" software.

    I work for a company that just rolled out a new piece of software to 9000 workstations . The software was well over a gigabyte in hard disk space, required us to upgrade almost half our workstations, needs to be patched at least twice a month, and has serious issues with anything but a pristine network connection to the database (they require less than 40 ms l
  • ThinStation [thinstation.org] is a Linux-based very thin client that does little more than set up a remote terminal connection. It boots off CD, Network, or even a HD if you like. You can store config info on a floppy or network if you want.

    From the web page: Thinstation is a thin client Linux distribution that makes a PC a full-featured thin client supporting all major connectivity protocols: Citrix ICA, NoMachine NX, 2X ThinClient, MS Windows terminal services (RDP), Cendio ThinLinc, Tarantella, X, telnet, tn5250, VMS te
  • No! NO NO NO NO NO!!!

    It's going to cost nearly as much money to deploy this, perhaps a lot more (factor in server cost, and perhaps some network upgrades, along with the client itself). Your workforce will be terribly unhappy (latency, inability to use a REAL bloody computer), your support staff will have just as much to do trying to coax 99.999% uptime out of your servers/network, and there is a long history of implementations like these that were quickly reversed.

    If you (or your PHB) *really* must do this

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LDoggg_ ( 659725 )
      It's going to cost nearly as much money to deploy this, perhaps a lot more (factor in server cost, and perhaps some network upgrades, along with the client itself). Your workforce will be terribly unhappy (latency, inability to use a REAL bloody computer), your support staff will have just as much to do trying to coax 99.999% uptime out of your servers/network, and there is a long history of implementations like these that were quickly reversed.

      Do you have any real world experience with this? I do.

      I vol
      • Exactly. With Linux, you set it up and it just runs. There are none of the problems you encounter frequently with that other OS. Linux is the key. It works for us not Bill G.

        I switched to Linux when I had just five Windows machines that crashed daily just when someone needed them to perform. I put Linux on out of desperation and the same hardware ran six months without downtime. People who use that other OS just cannot get their minds around a system that works, has few bugs, costs little, and is flexible

  • Install the clients as linux terminals. http://www.ltsp.org/ [ltsp.org]

    Connect them to a mosix cluster http://www.mosix.org/ [mosix.org]

    Use rdesktop for those apps which still need windows. http://www.rdesktop.org/ [rdesktop.org]

  • I've been on all sides of this. Sometimes it's good. Most of the time it isn't adequate.

    Many applications don't work well in a Terminal server environment. So we need (you guessed it) Windows on the client.
    Other applications' licenses don't allow use on a Terminal server. So we need (yet again) Windows on the client.
    Today remote users (for some reason) have latency that is too high to be productive on the Terminal server. So we'd better have Windows on the client.
    The secretary who only ever uses Word a
  • I created a custom Gentoo install that used a custom GDM 'faces' theme to display icons for each Citrix 'app' (these were really one user account per application with the .xinitrc and .icaclient ini files setting the app/login when the user clicks the icon--no password necessary since they get prompted by Windows to login). This is actually a great way to do it when your unix skills are where mine are (not a guru!) because when the Citrix app closes, bam, the user's back at the GDM login screen. I'm sure on
  • Build your config, save it, then burn it to a livecd - boots into vmware player, loads image and boom - online - totally stateless, to un-futz, just reboot.

  • Can your infrastructure handle it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nologin ( 256407 ) on Saturday February 24, 2007 @02:24AM (#18132096) Homepage
    A lot of problems associated with thin client computing have little to do with the computers and terminals themselves; if you ignore the fact that your dependancy on the network is going to be an important part of keeping your thin clients working properly, it will likely cause more problems than solve them.

    Redundant switches and network cards in servers will help increase the available bandwidth and avoid leaving possible single points of failure. Also, if your budget allows, try to seperate the network the users access the servers on from the one that serves file shares, backups and administrator access. It will go a long way to improve the service available to users of the thin clients.
  • First warning... end users that these terminals are targeted towards typically HATE having to use a terminal like this where the software is served remotely. Unless if you have enough server bandwidth and they are local enough to be able to deliver the needed software at a speed similar to using it locally on a PC, you're going to be doing nothing but frustrating the end users. For people that really need to do the work, they want their software to run as quickly as possible so they can get their job don
    • ...running on dummy terminals...

      That's dumb terminals, you insensitive clod!

      Oh, wait...
    • Quoting the parent:

      First warning... end users that these terminals are targeted towards typically HATE having to use a terminal like this where the software is served remotely. Unless if you have enough server bandwidth and they are local enough to be able to deliver the needed software at a speed similar to using it locally on a PC, you're going to be doing nothing but frustrating the end users. For people that really need to do the work, they want their software to run as quickly as possible so they can g

      • If it is done right, the user of a thin client does not even know his programme is running on a distant server. Normally, a user will have something like a P4 on his thick client and a single hard drive. When he loads a file, it takes a few ms to seek and a few more to transfer. With server-centric computing, files like the browser executable, common webpages, and parts of the databases are already in RAM taking microseconds to activate. Things just flash on the screen! On my personal terminal server, now two years old and rickety, the first time I load OpenOffice (my biggest, ugliest app) it can take 7s. When someone logs in after me and runs OO, it takes 2s to get going. You tell me users hate that?

        No, if it would work the way you seem to be able to make it work, then I'm sure it would be a great experience as long as the right programs were also served to the right people. You said it your self: "If it is done right"... From what I hear, too often that's not the case.

        But in all fairness, I understand your point. Doing it right would make for a good experience. My point was that my company does it very poorly. Who honestly thinks that running a terminal and a server in the same building in Texas

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by pogson ( 856666 )
          Parent quote:

          "Hell, getting our IT to respond quicker than a three-week time period to a simple "Please reset my password" request would be nice."

          Sounds like "Inactive Directory" at work. On my last system, after a few requests from folks who needed to change their passwords but did not know how, I typed a single line command that put an "apple" icon on every desktop with the words "change my password" underneath. That change went out to four servers on encrypted connections and it was so, just like God at

  • Use LTSP and you can convert all 3500 existing desktops into terminals without purchasing new hardware. Perhaps you can convince your boss to let you have 10% of the savings.
  • my company was recently looking for a terminal service solution. Because we sell our software to mostly small companies, it is sometimes too expensive for them to buy MS Server 2003 just to have 5-6 simultanous rdp connections, so we were looking for alternative and we found http://www.xpunlimited.com/ [xpunlimited.com]where they state
    that their product
    'XP Unlimited turns your Windows XP Professional System into a full blown Terminal Server, without any limit.'

    we found them just last week so haven't deployed their software

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by yuna49 ( 905461 )
      Before you run out and buy this, I suggest you read the EULA for Windows XP Professional:

      You may install, use, access, display and run one copy of the Product on a single computer, such as a workstation, terminal or other device ("Workstation Computer"). The Product may not be used by more than two (2) processors at any one time on any single Workstation Computer. You may permit a maximum of ten (10) computers or other electronic devices (each a "Device") to connect to the Workstation Computer to utilize th

  • Don't Do It (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Blackknight ( 25168 ) on Saturday February 24, 2007 @11:54AM (#18134164) Homepage
    As other people on here have said, this isn't a good idea. You're going to need to spend money on upgrading your network, buying new terminals when you already have perfectly good PCs, and you're going to need to build a server cluster to ensure that there is no down time. With 3500 users 5 nines isn't good enough, even a few minutes of down time is going to cost you $TEXAS.

    You're much better off setting up some Unattended install scripts and then setting everybody to use a network share for their documents directory, a SAN or NAS would be fine for this. With the proper security settings and group policies you shouldn't be spending that much time on fixing desktops, unless you have a lot of hardware failures.

    You also don't want to introduce a single point of failure, which is what running everything off a central server would do.
    • I worked at a place one year where MSFT decided to override our settings to "upgrade" to SP2 and our whole system needed reinstallation. We did not have enough storage to back up every client so I had to go through the whole system customizing clients. It made my day. In systems I design there will be no Windows.

      The last system I designed had 130 seats as Linux thin clients and I could tweak the whole system without leaving my chair in seconds. I had redundant servers ($1500 each) instead of redundant clie

  • We run lots of thin clients. We started with some HP/Compaq units, running a Windows CE version. But we are replacing them with a Linux based TC from Neoware. The neoware advantage is centralized management, and an OK easy way to push new software out. Look for a client management software as oart of the solution

    Currently the workstations runs a Citrix Client and in many locations a 3270 terminal emulation software.

    The Citrix servers needs all the RAM they can get, this is usually the bottleneck for number

  • We're actually doing it now... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Saturday February 24, 2007 @09:52PM (#18138740)
    I can't say where we're doing this, but we're trying out the idea of thin clients for some of our desktop positions. We found that we can get lots of quick wins for the positions that are mostly dumb terminals anyway. As long as the emulation software runs properly in Citrix, users don't know the difference. We're a Windows shop, so we went with Citrix. Native terminal services just doesn't have enough features.

    Here's what we've found so far:
    • Desktop support guys are not going to like this until you explain it to them. They're going to feel that you're taking their jobs away. Unless you give them better career choices to move into, they'll be very unhappy.
    • Your desktop environment will become a mainframe-like environment overnight. App changes now affect thousands of users at once. You need to have testing, integration and all that stuff dialed in before you even think about moving people to Citrix. If you're still doing "one-off" desktop support and don't have a well-managed environment, you may run into trouble.
    • All of your apps must at least support being run in terminal services mode. Manually tweaking all those in-house apps to store their settings correctly is a huge pain.
    • Citrix can be expensive, and once you're on it you will never get off. Remember, once you replace PCs, you now have a machine on everyone's desk that is useless without the back-end environment.
    • Don't skimp on the server hardware. Max out everything; you're going to need it.
    • We're forced to use IE because of ActiveX dependencies in our core applications. IE takes up almost 30 MB of RAM, per window, per user just sitting idle. If you can, you might want to consider limiting the number of open IE windows to one.

    We're actually doing pretty well with this, but don't forget that some positions in the enterprise just can't function without full-blown PCs. Hosting things like engineering or CAD apps is not worth the effort.

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