Using more Thin Client resources

[AntiThesis]

Hi,

 

We've been running with a thin client setup now for a year and it's... not bad but I'd like it to be faster (especially with stuff like google's Image search - the horrible infinite scrolling one) as well as some applications - particularly flash and so forth.

 

It's maintenance time so now is a good time to reconfigure. I'll be playing with various settings and server types but chiefly what I'd like to find out is - is there any way to leverage the resources on the thin clients? They're HP-T510s so they have 2 gigs of RAM etc. Is there something out there I can make use of?

[tmcd35]

I think it's a question of what server OS, what client os and what connection protocol you are using? Best results (assuming Windows Remote Desktop) would be had from Windows Server 2012 and the lastest RDP clients.

 

Assuming your T510 is a Windows 7 embedded model then HP's download page: Drivers, Software & Firmware for HP t510 Flexible Thin Client - HP Support Center gives some options. Looks like their is a HP accellerator (Velocity) that can be installed on the server and a new RDP (version 8) for download.

 

No doubt similar downloads are available for other T510 client OS's that could also potentially boost performance.

[AntiThesis]

Thanks - that's a handy page to have. I'm going to do some tests with Server 2012 and the latest WES stuff - should be interesting. Will have to see how it goes since the T510s I have are unfortunately/fortunately Linux based. Do you know offhand if there's a performance loss when using Server 2012 and the Linux base?

[PotNoodleTech]

If you can get the Linux based clients to support RDP 8.x then you should be able to leverage all of the VDU and Sound improvements MS have made to RDP since Windows 2003.

 

Unfortunatly, for me my HP Linux clients are un-updatable - I am stuck having to use 2003 servers for those and my Windows PE ones are stuck on RDP6 so I am stuck on Windows 2008 for those.

 

For me the thin client days are over as the whole intention was we would save money on each thin client, and then could upgrade the server back end once every few years and leverage performance increases across the board - unfortunatly with the way RDP has been updated and the way the HP clients have not been updated for years, my plan has not come to frutition as using 2008/2012 on the server is more much more resource intensive, if you can't access the RDP8.1 features the resulting performance is worse than on 2003 IMHO.

 

So back to fat clients. I wish I'd bought fat clients back then - at least I could now have shoved more RAM and an SSD in them and accessed a cheap instant performance upgrade.

Edited December 17, 2013 by PotNoodleTech

[dhicks]

Is there something out there I can make use of?

 

We're currently looking at this too. My plan is a minimal Linux install that runs a browser (probably Chrome) locally and can connect via RDP to run specific applications (MS Office, our MIS, etc). That way web browsing is done locally but we can still run assorted Windows applications as needed. Thinstation and ChromiumOS might be the distributions to consider, although I haven't looked at either in a while - last time I did this I used a modified version of Slax.

[CyberNerd]

We're currently looking at this too. My plan is a minimal Linux install that runs a browser (probably Chrome) locally and can connect via RDP to run specific applications (MS Office, our MIS, etc). That way web browsing is done locally but we can still run assorted Windows applications as needed. Thinstation and ChromiumOS might be the distributions to consider, although I haven't looked at either in a while - last time I did this I used a modified version of Slax.

 

We are currently using thinstation with chrome installed and it boots from PXE and works well for this purpose

We have Citrix client installed but thinstation will also run the spice client which will offload some of the processing to the server. I'm eagerly awaiting Redhat to support Ovirt 3.3 which II understand has a native HTML5 spice client, so no local install needed.

[Axel]

If you can get the Linux based clients to support RDP 8.x then you should be able to leverage all of the VDU and Sound improvements MS have made to RDP since Windows 2003.

 

Unfortunatly, for me my HP Linux clients are un-updatable - I am stuck having to use 2003 servers for those and my Windows PE ones are stuck on RDP6 so I am stuck on Windows 2008 for those.

 

For me the thin client days are over as the whole intention was we would save money on each thin client, and then could upgrade the server back end once every few years and leverage performance increases across the board - unfortunatly with the way RDP has been updated and the way the HP clients have not been updated for years, my plan has not come to frutition as using 2008/2012 on the server is more much more resource intensive, if you can't access the RDP8.1 features the resulting performance is worse than on 2003 IMHO.

 

So back to fat clients. I wish I'd bought fat clients back then - at least I could now have shoved more RAM and an SSD in them and accessed a cheap instant performance upgrade.

 

 

Abutters,

 

I think you are in danger of confusing your "HP" experiences, with "Thin client" experiences - there is no technical reason why thin client manufacturers can't update their clients - some do, some don't - but that is a reflection on the support/marketing strategy of the manufacturer involved, not thin clients in general...