CC3 ideas needed

[mwnci]

We are running an RM CC3 network with ageing hardware. Fortunately all is not lost; Santa has been early and given us an Intel blade centre.

I want to take the processing burden off the workstations themselves and so have started looking into Thin Client possibilities. Rm have a product called Client Connect but to be honest I'm not keen - surely we can do the same thing with other software. Neither am I very keen to pay a lot of money to upgrade to RM CC4 which also supports various thin client possibilities.

What are my alternatives? Is it possibly to run thin client CC3 workstations (not vanilla) with any other software?

Or is it better if we cough up and go down the RM route?

Your ideas will be much appreciated.

[djm968]

Of course you can DIY!

RM Client Connect is just a Windows Terminal Server (Add and remove Windows Components) that RM engineers bolt into you LAN and then charge you for additional licensing and installation.

I have installed two WTS servers in a NLB cluster integrated into a CC3 network. The main issue is blocking the RM GPOs and configuring additional TS profiles however this is fairly easy to achieve with some scripting knowledge.

You will have to pay for TS CAL’ £11.00 each but that’s all.

[mwnci]

Thanks for your reply - was the resultant client just like a CC3 machine or were there differences?

[djm968]

There are some obvious differences because some of the RM software is proprietor, however with most Thin Client systems, there will is always going to be compromises.

Multimedia over the RDP protocol leaves a lot to be desired but improvement will be made with server 2008.

The RM Client Connect option also uses the same RDP protocol so this will have the same issues.

The most important thing to get right is the integration into AD anyone can set-up and install a TS but getting it to behave and sit happily alongside RM is a little more difficult and unfortunately there is no house of tiny tearaways to send them both too.