Thin client ideas

[steveg]

At one of my primary schools each of the classes (14) has 1 good spec desktop and 1 not so good, that could really do with replacing. The good spec ones are having video editing software etc loaded on them, and work great for that, and staff only need 1 pc capable of this in each room.

 

For the older computers, I was thinking of converting them to thin client pc's, but have a number of questions (apologies if these are a bit simple, not deployed any thin clients before!):

 

Will they cope with playing videos / multimedia? - Nothing too big, just things like video clips and flash etc on things like espresso with sound.

 

Will I need aditional software on the server, or can I do it all over terminal services? What advantage is there of using any extra software?

 

What software would be best to run on the clients?

 

How does licencing work for things like word etc, is it 1 copy per thin client, or 1 copy per simultaneous connection? Other than ms software everything else we have is site licences so should be fine.

 

 

 

Thanks

 

Steve

[djm968]

Hi Steve,

 

I noticed that no-one had replied so I thought I would give you a few pointers.

 

Licensing requirements are a little complex especially if you intend to provide remote access to the terminal server environment, but basically you will require one licence of MS Office and a TS Device Cal for each device you connect to the terminal server.

Additional software is not really essential unless you intend to deploy a multi terminal server farm, standard GPO’s offer enough security out of the box. Printing can be a little tricky but VBScripts can be implemented to map printers you just need to ensure the exact matching driver is installed on the Terminal Server.

 

One of the Academies I am currently working with are running Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash CS3 but Flash is a little bit sticky at times.

 

If you are a MLVS subscriber (School Agreement) you can download Windows XP Fundamentals for legacy PCs. This is a lean version of XP specifically designed for converting lower spec hardware to run as thin clients.

 

Hope this is helpful.

[steveg]

Thanks for the advice, has cleared a lot of it up. It will only be accessed internally (we have a seperate Terminal server for external) so that makes licencing a bit simpler.

 

I've had a play with thinstation, and will probably run this on the clients. My current idea (do tell me if this is a bad one!) is to vlan off all the thin clients. Then on this vlan have a DHCP server, that will also have all the necessary bits on to network boot the clients, so I can remove thier hard drives. The terminal server will then have 2 network cards, one in this new vlan, and one on the main network. - Clients will then connect via one, and the server will access the network via the other.

 

In reality the DHCP server and TS will all be on the same box, so probably best to run both as Virtual servers? I have a server 2008 enterprise licence availible for this box.

 

Steve

[Ric_]

@steveg: There's no need to ruyn a second DHCP server unless you alrewady use options 66 and 67 - perhaps you use WDS or FOG?

 

Even if you do need a new DHCP server (and consequently VLAN this), you shouldn't need to use VMs - DHCP will happily run alongside Termninal Services.

 

Don't forget that you also need Windows CALs (in addition to your TS CALs and Office licenses) for each client.

[steveg]

Ok thanks, yea we already use ghostcast server, and are moving to wds so I wanted to seperate it off. Our ip phones also use the same dhcp option to download their config files, so really didn't want a third thing on the same network!

 

Steve