Thin Client \ Virtual Desktop \ Virtual Apps

[gshaw]

With all these new technologies coming up, which one is going to win out in the end?

Do you go for classic thin clients, multiple sessions on one box?
Or full fat Windows desktops just running from a datacentre (VDI)?
Or basic Windows installs with the apps virtualised with App-V or similar?

[DMcCoy]

It's going to depend on what happens to applications really.

I'm thinking of things like Adobe CS4. None of these would be suitable.

It needs 1GB RAM, 256MB shader model 2.0 graphics card (for some features) and around 8GB HD space to install. So, with things like that still being released there's not much you can do except use proper machines.

App-v may be ok when running after it's finished caching, but thats about it.

I'm quite pleased I decided to move to dual core, 1GB min ram *with* nvidia 7300GS or above now for the last 2 years worth of machine replacements. It means our cs4 site license can actually be used with most machines.

[dhicks]

With all these new technologies coming up, which one is going to win out in the end?

I'm still suitably impressed with NComputing's hardware/software desktop "virtualisation" solution - our four staffroom workstations have been running from the one machine for half a term now and seem to be getting on okay. I'm planning to try and sort them out a bit this holiday and see if I can get CS3 working on them.

--
David Hicks

[Ric_]

If you take a look at the Citrix product range, it shows how the technologies complement each other quite nicely.

Your servers are all virtualised using XenServer and then your desktops are replaced by virtualised desktops using XenDesktop. The desktops have no applications installed... instead these are delivered from [virtualised] XenApp servers. XenApp can still be used for thin clients too and publishing applications on the web. Of course all this virtualisation is managed by Provisioning Server which provisions servers and desktops on the fly.

It's all very sexy and theres a great demo video at Citrix Systems XenDesktop Demos which describes it better.

Some of the latest Citrix technologies are also able to use the full power of modern GPUs so that software that traditionally couldn't be delivered this way now can - e.g. CAD, graphics apps, etc.