Scaling to fit the infrastructure?

[mrbios]

A very vague question with a large amount of variables i know....

 

I'm thinking of replacing some dieing equipment with terminals in April, currently we're using 45 Axel terminals and they're absolutely faultless. Currently those terminals are in relatively low use areas where there are 5 per classroom in one building and one classroom of 15. Only the 15 are used regularly while the others are more "now and again" and the Server 2008R2 VM running terminal services does a good job of coping (8 vCPU, 16gb ram assigned), i think given it's amount of use i could add a fair few more to it.

 

What I'm after though is an idea on flexibility with my terminals, should i think of a terminal services cluster, or if I'm going to be looking at 100+ terminals running at once in the future and maybe expansion beyond that if it deems to be a reliable plan, is there a better technology i should consider instead of basic terminal services and terminal services clusters? Citrix is obviously a common one, though I've never used it.

 

Thanks

[Axel]

Mrbios

 

For what its worth I would suggest giving W2012r2 thorough consideration - most features Citrix was known for are now integrated into W2012. (I am sure someone will point out

the Citrix only features, and they will no doubt be correct - but the gap between the two products has massively closed...)

 

Your terminals support W2012, though you may need to update the f/w (free) to take advantage of some of the newer features (ie NLA, USB redirection etc).

 

If you do explore the Citrix angle your current terminals support the latest levels ie StoreFront (Citrix 7.5)

 

Matt

[FN-GM]

I would never ever Recommend Wyse. We have a long standing issue here and they are turned around and said tough luck, its a hardware fault and there is nothing we can do to fix it. The support is also rubbish takes weeks to answer messages etc.

[mrbios]

Cheers @Axel That was a swift response from yourselves.

 

Seeing as things are advancing nicely in terms of windows terminal services in that case, and that I'm not planning this to happen until April, maybe i'll gear it for the release of the server side of windows 10 if I'm feeling like a brave early adopter.

 

Presumably clustering has improved somewhat in terminal services since the 2003 days? (which were problematic to say the least, and the last time i ever used it)

 

I would never ever Recommend Wyse. We have a long standing issue here and they are turned around and said tough luck, its a hardware fault and there is nothing we can do to fix it. The support is also rubbish takes weeks to answer messages etc.

 

I have to agree, I've had some Wyse clients some years ago, problems up the ying yang and support utterly was useless. Axel terminals have been a breath of fresh air here

Edited October 20, 2014 by mrbios

[localzuk]

We run about 80 thin clients here, all in standard 2008R2 RDS, and we've not had any issues at all. We had far more issues when we ran Citrix XenApp on Server 2003 in fact.

 

So, I'd say you don't need to add anything more to be honest. Just make sure you keep the server well specced with resources to support the demands.

[FN-GM]

We have 250 thin clients and we also use the Citrix Solution for BYOD and remote access. We have 6 Dell Blade Servers with 96GB Ram, 24 cores and 250SSD. They are on 2008 R2 with Citrix Zen App. We have plenty of slack here so a server can be out of service. Works a treat.

[Liam]

I have just faded out our session server environment. We just found it didn't work. The demands become too high and they just couldn't handle it. E. G sound and media. I am just testing the app publishing via 2012 now. Removed the desktop experience all together really. I can see it getting some resistance if I ran with it. It's just change... And who likes change.. Lol.

 

I know some schools have made thin clients work, but have invested massivly in implementing a citrix environment.

 

That's just our opinion. Makes interesting discussion though.

[localzuk]

Thin clients are simply not for media and audio. They're not designed to be used that way. Even with Citrix XenApp you'd have serious troubles.

 

Thin clients are more aimed at average users. The web browsing, word documents, powerpoints etc...