Thinclient servers

[KarlGoddard]

What sort of spec should i look for on a server(s) for Thin Client use?

 

Early days on the project yet but I'm looking into using TC's in our library (7 PC's) and our 6th form study area (15 PC's)

 

the current PC's are used for email / internet / MS Office type duties, the heaviest app they'd ever get used for would be MS Publisher so I think they're a prime candidate for replacement with TC's

 

A friend in another school has just, or will be getting, a trial Axel box so i'll be going to have a look at that when he gets it but at the moment I'm thinking about the server end.

 

With only 22, possibly going up to 25 / 26, clients I reckon 2 servers should do the job. So what sort of spec should I be looking at. Never used TC's in work so i'm pretty much clueless as to what spec I need.

 

Cost, as ever, is also a big factor!

 

Any input would be welcomed

[FN-GM]

For around 30 clients I would recommend minimum 4GB Ram, Modern Duel or Quad core.

There is a guide here: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/thin-client-virtual-machines/6883-quick-guide-thin-client-computing-promised.html

[kestrel1]

We are just getting two more application servers for our TC's.

They are IBM X3550. Xeon Quad core 2.0ghz processor x 2 with 4gb Ram & 73.4gb HDD.

Our current servers are twin Xeon's with 3gb Ram. Also IBM.

We use TCX boxes, look here for info:

Precedence Technologies - ThinIT TCX and TCM - Revolutionary media-intensive thin clients

Also have some ThinTune machines, but these are a few years old now.

Talk to Precedence about your needs, they will be able help.

TC's are the way to go. They sit there doing exactly what they should & cause little trouble, unlike Fat clients (PC's)

[KarlGoddard]

to digress slightly....

 

what tangible benefits have you achieved by using TC's

 

I'm primarily looking at power usage and physical environment benefits - more space, less heat etc.

 

Reducing support issues are less of an issue for us as the kit we currently have - Optiplex 170L's - have been (touch wood) 100% reliable, in fact I've not had 1 support call this year that required a visit to the 6th form (apart from replacing toner carts that is )

 

thanks!

[localzuk]

to digress slightly....

 

what tangible benefits have you achieved by using TC's

 

I'm primarily looking at power usage and physical environment benefits - more space, less heat etc.

 

Reducing support issues are less of an issue for us as the kit we currently have - Optiplex 170L's - have been (touch wood) 100% reliable, in fact I've not had 1 support call this year that required a visit to the 6th form (apart from replacing toner carts that is )

 

thanks!

 

Longevity of machines - a thin client will last 10 years, with only servers needing replacing every 3ish. So, as an example, a room of 36 thin clients could cost you about £60,000 less over 10 years if you normally follow a 3 year replacement cycle. Not including electricity savings.

 

Maintenance - you only install software on 1 or 2 servers, including updates, rather than managing it on X number of computers.

 

Set up time for new machines - you just deploy and voila you have a fully working install. No need to mess with software, as it is all on the server already.

[kestrel1]

to digress slightly....

 

what tangible benefits have you achieved by using TC's

 

I'm primarily looking at power usage and physical environment benefits - more space, less heat etc.

 

Reducing support issues are less of an issue for us as the kit we currently have - Optiplex 170L's - have been (touch wood) 100% reliable, in fact I've not had 1 support call this year that required a visit to the 6th form (apart from replacing toner carts that is )

 

thanks!

You are lucky that you haven't been called to the sixth form.

They do reduce heat slightly & the power usage is definitely lower, another thing is, we have a power switch in each room, hit the button the whole room goes off. No need to check that machines are turned off.

They have reduced the amount of support that is required here, which is a real benefit, as I am the only one looking after the whole school & sixth form.

The footprint of the TCX machines is very small. We are just about to get another batch of 35 that will be fixed to the back of the TFT screens, so the footprint gets even smaller.

We have only just stopped using some Acorn TC's. Can you honestly say that you have used 10 year old machines to run the latest software on Windows 2003 server?

Precedence also produce some Unix based software that will turn your old desktops in to thin clients, therefore extending their life even further.

As pointed out before all software is central to the servers, so if an upgrade is required you only have to do this on a few machines (in my case four at present, soon to be five)

Can be expensive to start off with, depending on what you use. We are using Citrix Presentation server 4 here & the licences are pricey, but well worth it IMHO.

Edited June 28, 2008 by kestrel1

[eean]

Precedence Technologies - ThinIT TCX and TCM - Revolutionary media-intensive thin clients

Are these actually revolutionary? The classic complaint about TC is they are rubbish for anything multimedia. Do these solve the problem, and how?

[kestrel1]

We haven't noticed any problems using these machines. As long as the servers & your network infrastructure are sound you shouldn't have a problem. Obviously for heavy graphics use a desktop is preferable & are purchased accordingly. Streaming video over the Internet is absolutely fine. Precedence Technologies can explain all the benefits of TC's if you give them a call or email if you are serious they can help.

[localzuk]

The difference with those machines and most thin clients is the inclusion of a dedicated graphics card. If you have a suitable system on the server end, you can make use of this. For example, Citrix can make good use of it.

 

The HP T5735 can do similar if I'm not mistaken.

[BaccyNet]

We've got 2 HP BL460c's (quad core, 4gb RAM, all other blade stuff as standard) which are running 60 clients across them.

 

Our biggest benefit has been the speed and manageability of the system. It really does make things so easy just to install software twice (once for each blade) and it is available for everyone. It has taken both the kids and staff a little while to realise that switching off the TC device doesnt stop a running session, but a few tweaks and they've gotten used to it.

 

As far as clients go, its great being able to have a new unit up and running in less than 2 minutes (HP TC's) Its now a chore ghosting the standard workstations

[dhicks]

What sort of spec should i look for on a server(s) for Thin Client use?

 

Considering 4GB of RAM can probably be had for under £100 these days, you might as well go for more - 8GB+. Might also be worth looking at more than one network port so you can aggregate them together and get more bandwidth between your server and the switch. You can get 4-port PCI Express gigabit ethernet cards these days (couple of hundred pounds upwards, I think), or just get several single network cards.

 

--

David Hicks

[kestrel1]

The TCX clients boot around the minute mark, never actually timed it, but it is very quick. Our older Thin Tunes take a whole lot longer. The TCX's can be managed easily via VNC, all password protected centrally. Upgrades to the firmware are initiated automatically from the unix server when required.

Not had any problems with these machines since the latest upgrade & the previous things where just little niggles.

[localzuk]

Considering 4GB of RAM can probably be had for under £100 these days, you might as well go for more - 8GB+. Might also be worth looking at more than one network port so you can aggregate them together and get more bandwidth between your server and the switch. You can get 4-port PCI Express gigabit ethernet cards these days (couple of hundred pounds upwards, I think), or just get several single network cards.

 

--

David Hicks

 

8GB will be of no use in a 32bit environment. And network traffic on a 32bit TS is never going to max out a 1gb network port. If you're usin 64bit TS then your suggestion makes sense though.

[dhicks]

8GB will be of no use in a 32bit environment.

 

Sorry, I keep forgetting that, good point - although I'd say it's almost worth having the spare RAM standing by for if you did move to a 64-bit OS, save the messing around later.

 

> And network traffic on a 32bit TS is never going to max out a 1gb

> network port.

 

Why not? Wouldn't it simply depend on how many clients you had connected? Or is the speed at which screen updates for clients can be produced limited by some other factor?

 

--

David Hicks

[localzuk]

Why not? Wouldn't it simply depend on how many clients you had connected? Or is the speed at which screen updates for clients can be produced limited by some other factor?

 

The average 32 bit terminal server is going to run out of memory before it runs out of network bandwidth. Even if they use 1mbps they would still support 1000 clients! No server could support that, and no thin client uses that amount of bandwidth.

[dhicks]

Even if they use 1mbps they would still support 1000 clients! No server could support that, and no thin client uses that amount of bandwidth.

 

So how come thin clients are generally so crummy at video if there's all that bandwidth spare? Couldn't we just crank up the amount of bandwidth used per client until they could handle full-screen video?

 

--

David Hicks

[Ric_]

So how come thin clients are generally so crummy at video if there's all that bandwidth spare? Couldn't we just crank up the amount of bandwidth used per client until they could handle full-screen video?

 

Desktops use the hardware acceleration of the video card to improve graphics quality - this is obviously not available to the thin client. Video playback is also quite a memory intensive operation.

 

There are technologies that are used to improve multimedia (such as Speedscreen from Citrix) and they do work. I have classes of kids here happily watching the BBC iPlayer (whether they should be is another matter) - the sessions don't grind to a halt but I do get lots of little warning triangles next to the memory metrics on my servers.

 

I am going to start looking into using 64-bit Windows on my Citrix boxes - the advantages are supposedly massive (50% more clients than the same box running 32-bit Windows!!!). I'm just unsure about some of the apps - it may be necessary to run some of the apps off a seperate 32-bit box using seamless Windows.

 

Anyway... back to the OP. You will be able to get away with a single server (dual processor, 4GB RAM, 15K SAS disks - disks and RAM are most important). You will have no redundancy but unless you invest in Citrix, 2X, SGD or similar you will need to do some manual DNS jiggery-pokery anyway.

 

Make sure you test a couple of client devices to make sure you can manage them sensibly - I like using HP devices because Altiris can set them up for me in a minute or two. Wyse and others also offer these features.

[Butuz]

Well - I would say you will probably only need one server, though it is up to you if you wish to future proof or have some redundency. I have run up to 38 clients on an older spec server (Dual 3.4 Xeon, 4GB, 3 x 73GB 15k RPM) and I now have two more new servers (Dual 2.3Ghz Quad Core, 4GB RAM, 3 x 73GB 15k RPM) so will run 100 clients across three servers.

 

The 4GB Mem limit of Windows 2003 Standard 32bit is the limiting factor on how many thin clients you can have per server.

 

Ideally you should use 64bit Win2k3 and run as much memory as the server could fit. I would guesstimate a top spec quad core server with 8 or 12GB could run well over 60 clients.

 

Unfortuatly our system is the RM Client Connect system and they only currently support Windows 2003 Std 32 bit - hence 3 servers.

 

As for the benefits of thin client I would list them as:

 

For:

* Lower Initial cost.

* Dramatically lower power usage (eg Axel client = 9watts per unit)

* The above = dramatically lower heat output, and dramatically lower electricity costs.

* Ease of installation - 3 minutes to unbox and set up an Axel client, 26 seconds from cold boot to logon screen

* Ease of managment and troubleshooting - spend 15 minutes uninstalling Office 2003 and installing Office 2007 on my 3 servers and hey presto = 100 clients updated with no downtime and no restarts!

* Better lifecycle - with no moving parts thin clients should theoretically be able to survive for 20 years. Either way - no more replacing every workstation every 3 years! All you need to do is replace the terminal servers as often as you need - eg 3 or 5 years.

* All the above = much lower total cost of ownership. or as I like to putit - making ICT Sustainable....

 

Against:

* Bad multimedia performance - this is down to the thin client hardware itself. As newer more improved thin clients come onto the market this will be less and less of a problem. Personally I think thin client develoment is being driven by education at the mo - It is us that needs Multimedia performance wheras in most businesses - they never needed to cater for all of their thin client users trying to view fulscreen video from youtube!!!!!!

* Lack of flexibility. If all of a sudden some new software came in that was highly demanding you would have a problem if all your ICT suites were thin client. This will be negated as time goes on by more powerful thin client units... but for now just have to hope you dont get landed with some kind of hideous badly written bloated java software....

 

Butuz

Edited June 30, 2008 by Butuz

[Ric_]

@Butuz: I hope you are running the third drive in those servers as a hot spare. RAID 5 will slow down the disk performance on the servers. You really need a hardware RAID card with write-behind cache to mirror the drives or stripe the drives. Otherwise you add another bottleneck.

 

I also tend to favour servers with 3.5" drives because they are more cost effective and you only need 2 in a 1u chasis for a TS anyway. My current favourite for this is the Sun Fire X2200 M2.

[Butuz]

Ric - it's raid 5 yes but with a hardware raid card with 64mb memory.

 

Butuz

[dhicks]

Desktops use the hardware acceleration of the video card to improve graphics quality - this is obviously not available to the thin client.

 

Why not? Graphics cards today are basically processors optimised to deal with graphics-orientated operations (matrix calculations, z-buffering, etc) with a wodge of dual-port RAM attached. Hmm, there must be some way of utilising that specialised hardware server-side and sending the resulting calculated graphics buffer to an individual client.

 

--

David Hicks

[localzuk]

Why not? Graphics cards today are basically processors optimised to deal with graphics-orientated operations (matrix calculations, z-buffering, etc) with a wodge of dual-port RAM attached. Hmm, there must be some way of utilising that specialised hardware server-side and sending the resulting calculated graphics buffer to an individual client.

 

I thought Citrix did just that somehow. There are some models of thin client such as the HP T5735 and the ThinSpace TX405 series which have dedicated GFX cards to take advantage of this.

[Ric_]

I've just watched (Video) Apollo technology for 3D professional graphics - Derek Thorslund on the Citrix website. Talk about amazing!

 

Also check out http://deliver.citrix.com/go/citrix/SpeedScreenLR to learn about Citrix SpeedScreen

[dhicks]

there must be some way of utilising that specialised hardware server-side and sending the resulting calculated graphics buffer to an individual client.

 

I thought Citrix did just that somehow. There are some models of thin client such as the HP T5735 and the ThinSpace TX405 series which have dedicated GFX cards to take advantage of this.

 

That a good idea, but the opposite of what I suggested above - why can't the server use one of these humoungous modern triple-GFX card setups to handle all the graphics processing server-side and then update the client's screens over the network, no client-side graphics processing needed?

 

--

David Hicks

[Ric_]

That a good idea, but the opposite of what I suggested above - why can't the server use one of these humoungous modern triple-GFX card setups to handle all the graphics processing server-side and then update the client's screens over the network, no client-side graphics processing needed?

 

This is what the Apollo project is doing and the 'tech prveview' is currently available for XenDesktop. If you watch the first video that I posted above you will see how this exact technology is used to run Vista with full Aero and do CAD. The Google Earth demo is amazing too!