Chris_ Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 (edited) Hi all! We're looking to replace some computers in our primary school and are considering replacing them with thin clients. They will be additional computers in classrooms and aren't connected to IWBs or other peripherals. One of the reasons for looking at thin clients is for a more 'instant-on' setup where they could be turned on and students logged on in <1 minute. We would need to be able to deliver a good user experience, including the playback of full screen flash video (YouTube etc). We'd like to use standard RDS on 2008 R2 servers at the back-end. Would a couple of desktops with latest gen i7's, 12GB RAM and a few SSDs in RAID1 or 10 cope? Are there any particular make/models of thin client that you'd recommend for this sort of use that we could look into further and get some demo units of? Thanks in advance! Chris EDIT: I should have said, initially we'd be looking to use this setup for around 20 thin clients. Edited June 13, 2014 by Chris_ 1
localzuk Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 I'd personally not want to use desktop spec processors for it, specifically because of Flash player and Youtube. They hammer the processor in my experience. You want more cores than processor speed also. SSD is a definite good idea, it basically eliminates the disk IO as a bottleneck.
kmount Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 (edited) Make sure whatever you go with on the endpoint supports RemoteFX so you get the best multimedia performance out of your environment (Even if you don't put in hardware GPUs) Edited June 13, 2014 by kmount
PotNoodleTech Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 Cost it up accurately and carefully. You may find that you could go with fat clients for the same price and then never have to worry about things like flash animations and youtibe videos or badly written CPU hogging primary school software ever again...
ICTDirect_Dave Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 If you're looking for servers to run the back end give me a shout, one of my Z800s with a pair of hex cores should do the trick!
Achandler Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 Honestly buy fat clients. Thin clients aren't great for flash videos, you tube etc etc. Clients can end up being nearly as expensive as fat clients to as initial cost. 2
achedgy Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 Yeah, agree with all the above, been there, ended up ripping it all out, as it just couldn't handle what they wanted to do, some of the software was just a nightmare to get working. Best thing ever, going back to normal PC's 1
ADMaster Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 Go with fat clients if you can, or perhaps chrome boxes. We had thin clients in our primary and with all the flash and shockwave type stuff they like to do it was horribly slow. Granted this was on a 2003 TS and the remote FX features may have improved that sort of thing greatly now. I just replaced several thin clients with Lenovo all in one units no complaints now. The thin clients were put in places where basic web research and word processing is done.
localzuk Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 (edited) For a primary, I'd probably recommend fat clients too. If you can't afford the price of new stuff, you could look at refurbished stuff. ICT-Direct would be able to sort something out that would suit. You can do flash/video on thin client very reliably now, but the cost to create the setup is quite high to start for a small number of clients. Edited June 13, 2014 by localzuk 1
TheScarfedOne Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 Yep, fat client...and that's even as a thin client user. Just not really appropriate for what you want in this case I think
Alis_Klar Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 Thin clients have no advantages in a primary IMHO unless you want users to access a school desktop and apps from home or use a iPad as a thin client.
witch Posted June 13, 2014 Posted June 13, 2014 IME Thin clients are great for office-type applications. Anything else and you will be better off with fat clients
Michael Posted June 14, 2014 Posted June 14, 2014 I totally agree with the above Another way to look at it, is you have a single point of failure, whereas with FAT clients they can run standalone or networked accordingly.
seawolf Posted June 14, 2014 Posted June 14, 2014 You would never want to use desktops as the servers for thin clients, unless you want a really bad user experience. VDI solutions can work quite well in the right environment and setup, but most of the time they aren't setup correctly in one way or another (i.e. inadequate VDI servers and storage, slow network, need for apps not suited to VDI). The best VDI setups I have personally seen all used Sun Rays and Sun Ray Server, and they worked extremely well even over WAN connections. But, since Oracle decided to kill off Sun Ray last year, that's no longer an option. In your situation, you should either go with traditional thick clients or Chromeboxes if these will meet your requirements. Chrome OS is really just another variation of the "thin-client" or network computing systems, but one that works quite well as long as you have a good internet connection and are happy with the limitations of Chrome OS.
Axel Posted June 15, 2014 Posted June 15, 2014 Performance is not the reason people chose thin clients - PCs will always be faster and more flexible - the real question is, are thin clients fast enough for the intended purpose ? There are many benefits which in many cases out-weigh any performance limitations - for example cost, instant booting (a point the OP raised), silent, no fiddle-factor, no software updates - no virus implications or AV required - easy and remote administration etc. How long does it take to rebuild a failed PC ? - a TC can be replaced and the user connected to the work they were previously doing in 5 seconds... This may help set expectations for multi-media performance - it's a few years old - but most of the points are still relevant for a device costing in the range of £150... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMnzHJbHHT0
seawolf Posted June 15, 2014 Posted June 15, 2014 Performance is not the reason people chose thin clients - PCs will always be faster and more flexible - the real question is, are thin clients fast enough for the intended purpose ? There are many benefits which in many cases out-weigh any performance limitations - for example cost, instant booting (a point the OP raised), silent, no fiddle-factor, no software updates - no virus implications or AV required - easy and remote administration etc. This may help set expectations for multi-media performance - it's a few years old - but most of the points are still relevant for a device costing in the range of £150... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMnzHJbHHT0 The Axel units would work fine for most basic office productivity tasks, but not when the backend server is a couple of desktops. RDS in 2008R2 and beyond can do the job as long as you have a reasonable server(s) sitting on the backend that have been sized to support the number of clients required. The Axel units also don't have built-in headphone jacks, which might be a problem in a primary school. How long does it take to rebuild a failed PC ? - a TC can be replaced and the user connected to the work they were previously doing in 5 seconds... Rebuilding a failed PC? That takes 20-25 minutes in our environment. 5 minutes to replace the PC and 15-20 minutes to image and bind it using FOG. It's not 5 seconds, but we also don't have to do anything new to make it happen. Most schools are already setup to support thick clients well, so in a small deployment of thin clients or thinPCs, I don't see the ROI when a lot of extra effort is required in configuration and testing (as well as possibly a new server). Just wouldn't recommend it in the OPs situation.
Axel Posted June 16, 2014 Posted June 16, 2014 .....you may also want to consider Microsoft Multipoint Server if only looking for 20 seats It's essentially a very low cost version of the full server version of W2008/W2012 aimed at the education sector - it does have some limitations but could be worth a look, you can download a free demo copy from MS... Windows MultiPoint Server 2011 Home Page https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZLMBqD0c44
Chris_ Posted June 17, 2014 Author Posted June 17, 2014 Thanks for all the input guys! I get what you're all saying that for a small number (~20) of devices we'd probably be better off with fat clients, but the PCs are not in use all day everyday, so spending ~£600 per PC for a fast PC that boots up/logs on in less than a minute seems like a waste Quite a bit of negativity towards the use of PC hardware for the RDS servers.The inspiration came from here Custom RemoteFX RDS Farm – The Intro | my world of IT his results looked quite good, each PC could host around 6-12 sessions depending on usage.
PotNoodleTech Posted June 17, 2014 Posted June 17, 2014 £600?? Egads, shop around!! I just paid £270 each excluding VAT for a batch of 60 new PCs with 5 year warranty, G3220 CPU, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Win7 Pro Acedemic on Microsoft Shape the Future Program. All you need for quick boot and quick log on times is 4gb(or more) of RAm and a 128GB (or more) SSD. CPU barely makes a difference.
localzuk Posted June 17, 2014 Posted June 17, 2014 Thanks for all the input guys! I get what you're all saying that for a small number (~20) of devices we'd probably be better off with fat clients, but the PCs are not in use all day everyday, so spending ~£600 per PC for a fast PC that boots up/logs on in less than a minute seems like a waste Quite a bit of negativity towards the use of PC hardware for the RDS servers.The inspiration came from here Custom RemoteFX RDS Farm – The Intro | my world of IT his results looked quite good, each PC could host around 6-12 sessions depending on usage. I'd suggest that £600 is too much to spend. A PC which can turn on quickly can be bought for a lot less. An i5 desktop with an SSD from ICT-Direct would probably set you back by about £300 I'd say. Plus monitors, which'll be anything from £35 to £100 depending on size etc...
Chris_ Posted June 17, 2014 Author Posted June 17, 2014 Sorry, that figure was inc VAT as we pay VAT. Our last batch of PCs were just under £500, AIO type things, 4th gen i3, 120GB SSD, 8GB RAM, 22" monitor and a 5 year warranty. Also, as an independent school we might not be able to get the MS Shape the Future licensing.
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