Fat v. thin v. multi-seat client showdown

[dhicks]

Hello All,

 

Right: we have a sixthform building with 10 shared study rooms for sixthformers. Each room currently has an ageing Dell Dimension 2400 in - decent, reliable enough machines, but starting to seem a bit slow and also now have rather too small harddrives to fit our full set of installable software. We'll be getting a lot more sixthformers next year, so we need to sort out our workstation provision - the head of sixth form is aiming for 3 workstations per room.

 

The options I can think of are:

 

- Upgrade the harddrives of the current machines (£50 each, so £500) and buy some laptops/netbooks for general use (£400? X 20 = £8000) plus some sort of charging cabinet (er, £1000?) and a decent wireless access point (a stand-alone Ruckus 7363 - £500?). £10,000.

 

- Buy 30 all-new Windows 7 Acer R3610 mini all-in-ones (£300) and screens (£100). £12,000.

 

- Buy 30 new thin client devices of some kind (£???), with screens (£100). Handily, the nice people at Axel Technologies are sending me a free M75 all of my very own to play with, although they recommend their M80 as their current model. Anyone used the M80, can recommend it, or tell me how much one is?

 

A thin client solution, of course, is going to need a server - I discussed a Dell T610 with 24GB of RAM in a previous thread which would seem to be perfect for 30-odd users. £2,000. We would also need 30 server CALs and 30 TS CALs - anyone any idea how much? In total, £5,000 to start plus a cost (including CALs) for each device * 30.

 

- Buy some second-hand all-in-one workstations to use as thin clients. We got some old all-in-one RMs for £30 each the other year, I don't suppose anyone's having a classroom refurbishment this year, are they?...

 

- Buy 10 decent desktop machines with twin dual-head graphics cards (£500?), a copy of Windows Multipoint Server 2010 (£??? - anyone know?) and appropriate CALs (£???). If we bought new screens at £100 each, I'm guessing that's around £1,000 per PC, so £10,000 for the lot.

 

Does the above seem about right? Anyone any thoughts?

 

 

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David Hicks

[VirtueTechnologies]

Hi David,

 

What apps and what level of performance are your users looking for here?

 

Any Flash or multimedia?

[djm968]

I would go for the thin client solution, TS CALs are around £17.00 each and £6.00 each of a Server 2008 device CAL

[dhicks]

What apps and what level of performance are your users looking for here? Any Flash or multimedia?

 

Good question - I hadn't considered that. We run A-level photography and media studies, and we have a site license for Adobe Creative Suite 3 and Serif Design Suite. Our media suite is a classroom, not a free-access sixth form study area, so ideally I guess we would like sixth formers to be able to do graphics and video editing on their workstations. I'm guessing the thin clients might struggle a bit (or a lot) with that - maybe the multi-seat option would fair better?

 

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David Hicks

[p858snake]

What about a mixture of thin clients and laptops (for the heavier apps (eg photo editing))?

 

And if you are worried about management of the laptops, you could perhaps get the librarian to manage them as a loanable piece in the system.

[dhicks]

What about a mixture of thin clients and laptops (for the heavier apps (eg photo editing))?

 

Good point - use the current workstations as thin clients (wouldn't even have to buy a new server for that, 10 clients could squeeze on to the prep school server) and get a trolly of netbooks.

 

And if you are worried about management of the laptops, you could perhaps get the librarian to manage them as a loanable piece in the system.

 

It's a good point, but we should be okay - this is a private girl's school, the students are generally relativly delicate with the equipment. We would need a central charging point for the laptops, and we'd have to get it through the student's heads that they need to plug the laptops back in so they charge overnight. Hmm - unless, of course, we skip the charging trolly and simply shove a couple of laptop power adapters inside the power trunking in each room, ready to plug in to a laptop.

 

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David Hicks

[p858snake]

you would need something better than netbooks for photo/video editing in my experience.... even if its just for screen size

[cookie_monster]

What about Windows MultiPoint Server 2010? I haven't used it but it seems to sit in between thin client and fat client.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/multipoint/default.aspx

[dhicks]

you would need something better than netbooks for photo/video editing in my experience.... even if its just for screen size

 

Is £400 about right as a guess for a laptop these days, say 15" screen?

 

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David Hicks

[joe90bass]

What about Windows MultiPoint Server 2010? I haven't used it but it seems to sit in between thin client and fat client.

 

Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 home page

 

just looked at that as it seemed very interesting! Apparently you can't join a domain though Not sure why MS would think that's okay. Do they think schools don't have domains/networks......!!

[dhicks]

What about Windows MultiPoint Server 2010?

 

Indeed - have just ordered two dual-head graphics cards to put in a desktop machine to try it out. I think it's still going to cost us around £1,000 for a 3-user machine by the time you've bought the machine, 3 monitors and Multipoint Server licenses and CALs. We could perhapse look at second-hand screens, though - 15" is actually a pretty resonable size (anything bigger will take up more space, too), and we managed to get some of those for around £30 each a couple of years ago.

 

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David Hicks

[dhicks]

Apparently you can't join a domain though

 

I think we've had a couple of other threads that have mentioned this. I think the version that we can license in a school is less limited - it can join domians and doesn't have a hard limit set on how many workstations you can attach to a server. In one thread we tried to figure out how many graphics ports you could get into one machine - I think we got to around 30...

 

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David Hicks

[dhicks]

I think you should take a look at the 10ZiG Technology RBT616v, this is a small, but powerful thin client (Intel Atom 1.6GHz), it has RDP 7 which allows for the offload of the processing power from the server to the Thin Client device.

 

Sounds interesting - how much are they?

 

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David Hicks

[dhicks]

I think you should take a look at the 10ZiG Technology RBT616v

 

Right: RDP 7. I assume that needs Windows Server 2008 to serve? If I have a dual quad-core processor machine with 16GB of RAM and 18 connected clients (second-hand machines running Linux and RDesktop), could I have 3 or 4 clients on RBT616v connected, and could those clients manage Photoshop okay? YouTube video? Any chance of doing video editing? Do I need a decicated thin client device to take advantage of RDP 7, or will RDesktop be okay? Would the second hand machines running Linux and RDesktop be able to handle Photoshop (CS3) okay anyway?

 

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David Hicks

Edited June 30, 2010 by dhicks

[dhicks]

Buy 30 new thin client devices of some kind (£???), with screens (£100).

 

The average price for a new, modern, RDP 7-capable thin client device seems to be around £150. We would then need to spend around £50-ish on CALs per device. Thin clients require a server - a Dell T610 capable of handling 30-odd Windows clients is around £2,000, so call that £50 per client. Screens are still £100, so that's £350 per client compared with £400 per client for a Windows 7 machine - £10,500 for 30 compared with £12,000 for 30. That hardly seems worth the bother - you get something a little bit cheaper that has trouble running multimedia.

 

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David Hicks

[Axel]

The traditional motivation for thin clients are factors such as:

 

Power consumption (5 watts)

Trouble free/reliable (5 year warranty)

Easy remote setting up

Totally silent (no fans / harddisk noise - which is noticable in its absence - though we all get used to it)

Zero on-going maintenance (no Microsoft upgrades, no service packs, no virus implications)

Instant booting (3 seconds)

Easy deployment - anywhere the LAN/WAN extends to etc

 

For multi-media requirements, to cover all the bases, a PC is probably the best option today...

[dhicks]

Has anyone used 2X to connect thin clients to Windows servers? Do I have the right idea here: 2X provide a propriatory replacement for RDP - instead of using an RDP client I use the PXE-bootable OS that they provide, which then connects to the Windows server using the 2X protocol? This, handily, would seem to imply that I don't need an RDP-capable thin client, so I don't have to be limited to RDP 5.2 (and its associated sound issues) on an RDekstop-based machine or buy £150 new devices, the 2X OS should work on our current old-desktops-used-as-thin-clients.

 

2X costs around £700 to install on one Windows server, so for 30 devices call that £25 per device, but we could save on client device costs by using old desktops - maybe £50 a device instead of £150, so maybe saving around £75 per device.

 

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David Hicks

[cookie_monster]

I'd be surprised if you didn't need a TS CAL still. With Citrix you buy a Citrix CAL and still need a TS CAL as well. RDP is actually licenced by MS from Citrix.

[dhicks]

I'd be surprised if you didn't need a TS CAL still.

 

Oh, I assume you do - the £150 cost is just for the thin client hardware, we'd still have to pay for Server/TS CALs for each device.

 

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David Hicks

[dhicks]

we'd still have to pay for Server/TS CALs for each device

 

Okay, so we could shell out £3,000 in total to upgrade our server a bit, install Windows Server 2008 R2 on it along with 2X for Terminal Services and license 30 clients. That would give us a server capable of running 30 thin client sessions. Can I run RDP sessions to a TS server at the same time as 2X sessions? What about if we wanted to use this TS server for home connections - if we wanted staff to be able to connect via VPN and use a remote desktop from home - what licensing do we have to sort out to do that?

 

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David Hicks

[dhicks]

if we wanted staff to be able to connect via VPN and use a remote desktop from home - what licensing do we have to sort out to do that?

 

Ah, just found out - £2,000 for an external connector license.

 

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David Hicks

[SYNACK]

Ah, just found out - £2,000 for an external connector license.

 

Thats for use with any computer, it may be cheaper to simply get some TS User CALs that should allow connection from any machine or TS Device CALs which would limit the teacher to one 'home computer' that they could use for it.

 

Edit: Oh and if using this setup I would sugest using a TSGateway server role included in 2008 which will redirect RDP traffic from any internal host that it is setup to connect to and pipe it over https. This allows for really easy globally accessable remoteApps to (from liscenced machines).

Edited July 1, 2010 by SYNACK

[dhicks]

Thats for use with any computer, it may be cheaper to simply get some TS User CALs that should allow connection from any machine or TS Device CALs which would limit the teacher to one 'home computer' that they could use for it.

 

True - 30 TS CALs X £20 would be £600, but I figured it might be easier to simply pay the one-off cost and be able to connect unlimited people (including, if I'm correct, pupils), allowing for expansion/change in usage.

 

Oh and if using this setup I would sugest using a TSGateway server role included in 2008 which will redirect RDP traffic from any internal host that it is setup to connect to and pipe it over https.

 

Thanks, I'll investigate - does this mean I don't have to have a VPN set up?

 

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David Hicks

[SYNACK]

True - 30 TS CALs X £20 would be £600, but I figured it might be easier to simply pay the one-off cost and be able to connect unlimited people (including, if I'm correct, pupils), allowing for expansion/change in usage.

 

Yes thats right it will cover students too.

 

 

Thanks, I'll investigate - does this mean I don't have to have a VPN set up?

Yes, the RDP is still encrypted over https and it means that it will work from almost anywhere. This also removes the posibility of ip range collisions and firewall/proxy issues. It does require the version or RDP client from XP SP3 or above but is a much safer less disruptive way of connecting for clients.

 

You can still have a VPN access method avalible for clients without this supprt allowing for Linux users to connect too. I am reasonably sure that the latest Mac version of the RDP client has this feature too. As the RDP client handls all of the encrypted traffic directly it never exposes an ip directly into the internal school network either which is better for security.

[Butuz]

Using older HP thin clients here for our sixth form provision. 36 clients are running off one server (Dual Quad Core 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, Raid 5, Win2k3 32 bit).

 

Clearly the server specification does not allow us to run 36 x graphics intensive programs up the sixth form. Overall for Word processing and internet including some flash sites it works well. The upgrade from 6 archaic PC's with 10 minute log on times to 36 thin clients with 20 second log ons was very very popular with my sixth form!! The whole project was implemented on a shoe string budget.

 

With regard to your licences, I pay £9.09 for a TS CAL and £3.27 for a Windows Server CAL via my LEA so I am not sure where you are getting the £50 odd licencing figure from.

 

Clearly things have moved on, if I was doing it again i would be looking at something along the lines of:

 

Tight Budget: Axel M80 clients off a Dual 3Ghz+ Quad Core 16GB RAM Win2k8 server.

Better Budget: Axel M80 clients or SUN Ray's off a Dual 3.2+ghz Quad/Six core with 24GB RAM with Sun ray or Citrix.

 

Either way upgrading from the HP thin clients to the Axel thin clients gives a massive boost in performance for intensive apps. With the HP youtube is unplayable, with the Axel youtube is watchable in a window and sound is fine.

 

Butuz