Wednesday, March 11, 2009

[THIN] Re: thin client deployment in a school


True, but what if your network is busy??


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From: "Joe Shonk"
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:51:14 -0700
To: <thin@freelists.org>
Subject: [THIN] Re: thin client deployment in a school

The vDisk cache on the server side is a lot of times faster than the local device for the same reason people notice that OS boots faster via PXE than local.  I try to avoid client-side cache when possible but there are use cases for it.  It does make HA much easier.

 

Joe

 

From: thin-bounce@freelists.org [mailto:thin-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Jim Kenzig http://thin.ms
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 8:06 AM
To: thin@freelists.org
Subject: [THIN] Re: thin client deployment in a school

 

Depends on where you put the vdisk cache.  You would need a very large san for the cache if you want to do it at the data center though.  I think you get better performance if it is on the local workstation
Jim Kenzig
Blog: http://www.techblink.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kenzig
Twitter: http://twitter.com/InternetPilot

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 11:00 AM, Joe Shonk <joe.shonk@gmail.com> wrote:

Huh?  Streaming the OS to a Thin Client is a great idea… You don’t need a storage device for PVS to work as everything runs over the network.  That is one of the selling points.  Several thin-client manufacture do this today and when you do a little inspection it’s Ardence (pre-Citrix) under the hood.

 

Joe

 

From: thin-bounce@freelists.org [mailto:thin-bounce@freelists.org]On Behalf Of Jim Kenzig http://thin.ms
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 5:01 AM
To: thin@freelists.org
Subject: [THIN] Re: thin client deployment in a school

 

I agree in this case Citrix Provisioning Server may be the way to go because you can stream an entire OS down to the workstation.  There are many schools currently doing this. However a thin client is not the best choice for PVS unless it has enough HD storage space for whatever OS you are sending to it. 

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 7:17 AM, Rick Mack <ulrich.mack@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Puneet,

 

I'm the greatest fan of terminal services around and I've done lots of successful school terminal server rollouts. I've even got our developers to produce freeware utilities so you can run stuff like AutoCAD multi-user on terminal services.

 

But 150 students isn't a lot of students and stuff like Maya, 3D Max etc is going to need some really hefty compute power (read GPUs) for rendering that you're not going to get in a shared environment, either terminal services or VDI. By all means use thin clients and put the compute power back in the computer room but don't even think about doing this stuff on either a pure terminals ervices or VDI solution unless you like pain.

 

Worst case I'd be tempted to go for a mix of VDI and PC blades and since the apps aren't OpenGL you're going to have to seriously consider using something like HP's RGS protocol which can deliver 3D applications, multimedia etc. I'd use HP's T5730 thin clients provided you can get a good price and you'll have a brilliant 3D application delivery system. The only gotcha with RGS is that the video resolution and colour depth are limited to the maximum console video capabilities. That means VMware is out (1180x885) for VDI and you're left with something like Hyper-V (1600x1200) or maybe some other Xen-based hypervisor to get decent screen resolution.

 

Of course if we're talking PC blades it wouldn't be fair not to mention Panologic and Teradici in particular because their solutions are pretty darn good for 3D applications (and just about anything else).

 

Citrix provisioning server has a possible place but if you're using PC blades there may be less expensive solutions out there.

 

regards,

 

Rick

 

--
Ulrich Mack
Quest Software
Provision Networks Division

 

 


 

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Puneet Goel <g.puneet@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I have to deply thin client in a school for around 150 students. They
will be working on advanced IT apps like 3D Max, Maya, Autocad,
Photoshop, Oracle, SQL.

can anyone guide me in finalizing server requirements for them.

thanks

 

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