Putting some fat on! dumping Citrix VDI?!? maybe!

[Griff]

We are a full on Citrix environment here Xenapp, Xencenter, Provisioning servers etc. We run 3 computer labs all 'thin client' or 'provisioned' as I am told. I am hoping to move everything back to vanilla Windows, HyperV, Full fat clients etc.

 

Don't get me wrong here Citrix is fantastic and the whole manage one image thing is very good but in the right environment. Also the knowledge needed imho to run this environment is fairly extensive I want to think of life after ME at this place and just makings things easier. When I joined in here all the admin staff were on provisioned thin client machines, I bought in a couple of full-fat machines and people lost their minds at how much quicker,stable, ENJOYABLE? they were to use I have now moved all the admin and office based staff to fat clients.

 

Am I being a lunatic potentially throwing all of this down the pan to go back to an original setup? I think I could save the school a good £6,000 per year just in fixed costs (licensing and support) thats not to mention future server and software upgrades that would be needed to support Citrix going forward. ok ok I know my work load will increase massively in the short term and maybe rolling out software/updates will be slightly harder but hey

 

FYI we are a middle school around 600 pupils 50 staff, 120 ish desktops, 50 laptops, 100 iPads, 10 physical servers!!!!! (mostly doing Citrixy stuff)

 

So has anyone else done this? and am I nuts? also hi to the support company who do our Citrix stuff and sorry if this upsets you but you gotta question things otherwise you just end up standing still !

[FN-GM]

We shifted one of our schools from 240 Wyse ThinClient laptops using Citrix to Chromebooks. Not only was it cheaper, but they are more reliable and the user prefer them.

 

Win Win.

[PotNoodleTech]

No you are not nuts to want to be going back to fat clients.

 

The school was nuts to go all citrix on the first place IMHO. Going back to simple fat clients and not being screwed over on server/licencing/support costs will be a revelation to you. Well I can see it already has been a revelation!

 

The whole "one image so much easier for IT support" sell from thin client retailers was a fallacy as it meant instead of supporting the odd issue with the odd singular a fat client you'd constantly be supporting the servers for the "whole service" day in day out instead.

The "increased reliability" sell from the thin client retailers was a fallacy as if there ever was fallout from software/server issues it could take down "everything" wheras when one of your 500 fat client breaks, one person is inconvenienced for a short period and it's an easy one time fix.

The whole "energy efficient" sell from thin client retailers was a fallacy as despite saving a few watts here and there with the thin clients, you ended up buying a bladecentre or two which dim the lights in the whole neighbourhood running 24 hours a day.

The whole "better value for money" sell from the thin client retailers was a fallacy as thin clients are not that cheap, often not much cheaper than fatties, and by the time you add on the extra costs of the servers, storage, licencing, support costs your now spending way more money that fat clients would have cost.

 

And to top it all off, the system is totally inflexible! If the school wins a 3d printer in a competition - oh dear - all of a sudden we need to buy a fat client to make that work fast and reliable. If the head of art wansts Photoshop installed in a suite - oh dear, can't do that as it would use too many server resources or slow the vdi system to much - how about we buy 30 fat clients instead?

 

Fat clients, cheap, customisable, low running costs, flexible.

 

Do what your school needs, not what someone else thinks you should do!

[mjk]

Personally I'd ditch the VDI but keep the xenapp.

[nadeem]

We moved from Citrix back to fat clients, I can see advantages for both but in the end I prefer our current set-up - we were really well supported in the process by our Citrix provider - please drop me a PM if you want their details - they were reasonably unbiased in their advice to us, and had some great ideas for reducing the cost etc in our Citrix environment that we didn't take up.

[nadeem]

We moved from Citrix back to fat clients, I can see advantages for both but in the end I prefer our current set-up - we were really well supported in the process by our Citrix provider - please drop me a PM if you want their details - they were reasonably unbiased in their advice to us, and had some great ideas for reducing the cost etc in our Citrix environment that we didn't take up.

[RJohnson91]

We run a full Citrix environment in our school and it's fantastic, but we have no ThinClients, our situation is this.

 

 

We run 2 XenServers for all of our core virtual servers (Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, Fileshares etc).

 

 

We have 2 XenServers for our Xen Management there are two instances of all virtual servers on both Xen's (Delivery Controllers, XenDirector, License Server, Provisioning Server, Netscaler, SQL and Storefront).

 

 

Finally we have 11 XenServers for our Xen Virtualisation setup (standard stuff here).

 

 

 

We run no ThinClients, all re-purposed HP machines, running a collections of RegEdits, GPO hacks and IE lock downs to automatically log in and set IE into kiosk mode, and point it to our storefront, it works wonders.

 

Laptops have been replaced with Chromebooks and I use Gsuite to automatically start the Citrix Reciever App and point them to our storefront again.

 

 

 

 

That being said, your environment is a lot smaller than mine, we have over 600 curriculum endpoints so the cost doesn't out weigh the reward.

 

 

I would question the idea that installing additional high end software like Photoshop would be a show stopper though, we run it well in our school, granted we have had to create a separate catalog with beefed up VM specs, but the cost of that is nowhere near buying high end physical machines.

 

Anyway, just some food for thought.

 

 

I'm pro Citrix, I think you'd be silly to scrap it (unless you can't afford it).

 

Ryan

Edited March 21, 2017 by RJohnson91

[PotNoodleTech]

It's always interesting to hear an alternative take RJohnson91!

 

I'm really struggling to comprehend how you could possibly consider it any more expensive to run a fat client network given that you already use fat clients as your "thin clients" (so no massive initial cost/electricity savings to be had by buying dedicated thin clients) plus you have the extra cost of 13 Xen servers, + all the licencing etc. I'm not having a go, just genuinely interested in how those costs must pan out.

 

Still - one thing is for sure, I am very jealous of your ability to easily present a "Zen desktop" to any device connected in any manner anywhere!

[RJohnson91]

It's always interesting to hear an alternative take RJohnson91!

 

I'm really struggling to comprehend how you could possibly consider it any more expensive to run a fat client network given that you already use fat clients as your "thin clients" (so no massive initial cost/electricity savings to be had by buying dedicated thin clients) plus you have the extra cost of 13 Xen servers, + all the licencing etc. I'm not having a go, just genuinely interested in how those costs must pan out.

 

Still - one thing is for sure, I am very jealous of your ability to easily present a "Zen desktop" to any device connected in any manner anywhere!

 

 

 

Hiya,

 

No problem!

 

We base our costs on our virtual network vs a non virtual network.

 

For example, by utilizing old equipment and attaching it to our virtual environment we remove the massive cost of an ICT refresh. (500 endpoints at £600 each every 4 years if we were to do an ICT refresh strategy, that's a huge cost!).

 

I know that licenses and servers cost money, but after year 2 you start to save money against a physical environment.

 

 

But regardless of the money saving, I love the full Citrix virtual environment because:

 

We only have two images to manage (Admin and Curriculum.)

 

Any software can be pushed out quickly, patches, updates and tweaks are applied once and applied to 500+ VMs in minutes, no more GPO to push out software!

 

We can offer the CAG (Citrix Access Gateway) for remote users and allow our less privileged kids to access high end expensive software from home with no extra cost to them.

 

More importantly we made sure we could find and justify the money because it makes our lives easier as ICT Support, and lets be honest, that should be a main influence!

 

 

 

Now that being said, I haven't ventured the logistics of running a 500+ VM environment through Hyper-V, maybe it would be cheaper, but with XenServer 7.0 being free I doubt it...

 

 

Ryan

[Achandler]

If you are comparing Citrix to buying fat clients that are £600 each then you should be saving money. Most schools seem to buy fat clients at half that cost (if not cheaper). They also last longer then 4 years.

 

I also thought (happy to be corrected) that when accessing a Windows Virtual machine, from a none Windows client (e.g. a Linux terminal) there was a licensing cost as well, a VDA license or similar which wasn't cheap.

 

I'm not saying Citrix doesn't work for you, we use it for external access and have about 40 thin clients on site but people prefer the fat clients here.

[RJohnson91]

If you are comparing Citrix to buying fat clients that are £600 each then you should be saving money. Most schools seem to buy fat clients at half that cost (if not cheaper). They also last longer then 4 years.

 

I also thought (happy to be corrected) that when accessing a Windows Virtual machine, from a none Windows client (e.g. a Linux terminal) there was a licensing cost as well, a VDA license or similar which wasn't cheap.

 

I'm not saying Citrix doesn't work for you, we use it for external access and have about 40 thin clients on site but people prefer the fat clients here.

 

 

Hiya,

 

Sorry you miss-understood, I am comparing a virtual environment with a non virtual one.

 

Fat clients to connect to Citrix VDI (£100) VS A standalone on domain computer with no VDI (£600+)

 

Our Microsoft licences covers us fully, however we do not use Linux machines.

 

Ryan

[Achandler]

I didn't misunderstand, I was jsut stating noone pays £600+ for a domain joined fat client unless it is for a specific job (maybe a graphics machine).

 

I look to spend about £300 on new computers, more then the windows clients you are using granted but the cost isn't as high as you made out. Just trying to get a proper comparison and highlighting potential pitfalls with the licensing, as when I started in my current place there was misunderstanding about VDA licenses, which aren't cheap.

[RJohnson91]

I didn't misunderstand, I was jsut stating noone pays £600+ for a domain joined fat client unless it is for a specific job (maybe a graphics machine).

 

I look to spend about £300 on new computers, more then the windows clients you are using granted but the cost isn't as high as you made out. Just trying to get a proper comparison and highlighting potential pitfalls with the licensing, as when I started in my current place there was misunderstanding about VDA licenses, which aren't cheap.

 

 

Even at £300 a pop, a site ICT refresh would cost us £150,000, we refresh ICT every 4 years.

 

We also purchase Dell Optiplex All-In-One machines that cost £570 each, so yes, some people do pay close to £600 per machine.

 

Different establishments have different needs, VDI may not be a financially viable fit for yourself, but for us it was a much cheaper option.

 

Thanks

[victory2015]

Even at £300 a pop, a site ICT refresh would cost us £150,000, we refresh ICT every 4 years.

 

We also purchase Dell Optiplex All-In-One machines that cost £570 each, so yes, some people do pay close to £600 per machine.

 

Different establishments have different needs, VDI may not be a financially viable fit for yourself, but for us it was a much cheaper option.

 

Thanks

 

Why would you replace all of your computers every four years in bulk?..

 

why not replace some every year so it is sustainable?

 

different needs for different schools and you have made it work so well done, just wouldn't work in our environment , been there done that so to speak!

 

how much would those 15 servers cost to replace? and when would you replace them in your refresh? how much are your licences etc...

 

i would be more interested in a 10 year model including server refresh whether you are saving money rather than a 4 year model. When those servers need replacing.. how much? and how long will those clients go on for? they certainly will need refreshing.

 

also you say your offer expensive software remotely, are you sure it is licenced as such? just because its on your image doesn't mean its allowed to run and be access from home..

 

many many questions, in the end it is what suits the school and the environment.

 

I think also 600 for a new machine is way too much and if your buying them at that level you have been well and truly ripped off!

 

I just bought 60 x HP All in one i7s and with cashback on our existing kit comes in at £250 each! I would never pay over £350 for a computer!

[RJohnson91]

Why would you replace all of your computers every four years in bulk?..

 

why not replace some every year so it is sustainable?

 

different needs for different schools and you have made it work so well done, just wouldn't work in our environment , been there done that so to speak!

 

how much would those 15 servers cost to replace? and when would you replace them in your refresh? how much are your licences etc...

 

i would be more interested in a 10 year model including server refresh whether you are saving money rather than a 4 year model. When those servers need replacing.. how much? and how long will those clients go on for? they certainly will need refreshing.

 

also you say your offer expensive software remotely, are you sure it is licenced as such? just because its on your image doesn't mean its allowed to run and be access from home..

 

many many questions, in the end it is what suits the school and the environment.

 

I think also 600 for a new machine is way too much and if your buying them at that level you have been well and truly ripped off!

 

I just bought 60 x HP All in one i7s and with cashback on our existing kit comes in at £250 each! I would never pay over £350 for a computer!

 

 

 

I think we may be hijacking this poor lads thread!

 

 

If anyone wants to talk ICT strategy I'm happy to PM

[PotNoodleTech]

It's funny how different schools have extravagantly different funding arrangements.

 

So there was a chap on here in another thread complaining that his budget was going to be cut from £250,000/year to £150,000/year and he thought that was really bad.

Then there was RJohnson91 who would balk at spending £150,000 every 4 years on new PCs.

Then there's comprehensive schools in Wales like us who routinely make £150,000 last 8-10 years.

 

Diffent strokes for different folks!

[bigjb]

Interesting discussion - we have had to make some tough decisions regarding our Citrix setup in the thin v fat debate. The deciding factor was seeing a 3 fold price increase from Citrix Subscription Advantage to Citrix Select this year which changed the scales of financial affordability. My understanding is Subscription Advantage will be phased out from June this year & replaced by Citrix Select. My advice would be to seriously check your costs.

[Arcolite]

We're looking to remove our Citrix environment this year.

 

We can achieve everything we currently use Citrix XenDesktop for with GlobalProtect VPN on our Palo Alto.

We've only used it for simplfied Remote Access and giving students a "break proof" programming environment. VPN solves one, and we can achieve the latter with either local Hyper-V Read-Only in Windows 10 or just through GPO and monitoring, saving ourselves a lot of money.

Edited March 22, 2017 by Arcolite