Windows Terminal Services clients per machine

[localzuk]

As I haven't used or looked at terminal services in any way before, and the white paper on the MS site regarding user numbers per server seems a bit outrageous (500 users for a quad processor 2.4Ghz Xeon server!!! haha!), how much server capacity would I need for 50 terminals running basic programs (nothing amazing, mostly stuff like office, IE, textease *shudders*)? I am guessing that a couple of HP 360G5's with dual Intel 5160 (3Ghz) processors and 4Gb ram would do the trick? Or is this not enough/overkill?

Also, if anyone else has experience of this sort of thing. What difference does faster thin clients make? ie. a 333Mhz Risc compared to a 500mhz risc chip? I know the importance of video ram but everything should be running on the server should it not?

[djm968]

The server spec sounds fine to me but I would always recommend a little overkill as this provides scalability if you decide to add more clients later.

Faster thin clients will make little difference to the end user experience but I would recommend looking at your network infrastructure carefully prior to embarking on a thin client installation.

If your switches support Layer 3 switch and routing, I would recommend implementing a separate VLAN for your TS environment.

[CyberNerd]

50 terminals running basic programs (nothing amazing, mostly stuff like office, IE, textease *shudders*)? I am guessing that a couple of HP 360G5's with dual Intel 5160 (3Ghz) processors and 4Gb ram would do the trick?

Fine

Also, if anyone else has experience of this sort of thing. What difference does faster thin clients make? ie. a 333Mhz Risc compared to a 500mhz risc chip?

Only really counts if your doing interesting things like semi-thin clients - run some applications locally, LTSP type stuff. for bog standard RDP or citrix it might make them boot quicker, maybe it would be better for higher levels of encryption, probably not noticable our PII 233's PII 350's and Via 1GHz are all about the same speed on citrix.

[Ric_]

Generally, the faster thin client devices come with the more bloated embedded OSs (e.g. Win XPe) and aren't really necessary... espcially if you aren't running any local apps (as CyberNerd says).

[localzuk]

Thanks. I am not too worried about the networking side of things as we now have some fancy kit throughout the school and I was intending to use a VLAN for this anyway (nice and easy way to monitor the traffic generated as a whole via that service). I shall draw up some costings for my boss now then.

[Geoff]

Doesn't Citrix offload stuff to the client if the client is capable Ric?

[Ric_]

@Geoff: Both Citrix and Terminal Services can cache stuff on the client if you want it to. This generally just needs some form of disk storage though.

You can also run programs locally to enhance performance. For instance, if you have a number of web apps you could run a web browser locally on the client. Web apps (particularly Flash/Shockwave) are notoriously memory/bandwidth hungry.

You can also publish applications with Citrix so, for instance, you could run Program Neighborhood (not a typo!) on a XP client and when application X is loaded from the start menu it actually runs on the terminal server but appears in a 'seamless window' just like any application that is running on your local machine. This can be extended further with 'Application Streaming' in Presentation Server 4.5 but I only upgraded my servers on Monday so I haven't looked into this... yet