Windows MultiPoint Server 2010

[cookie_monster]

I've not seen this mentioned on Edugeek so I thought i'd post it for people to take a look at.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/multipoint/

 

 

It looks like a MS version of SoftXpand but of course without the grey licencing issue

 

One grey area is the legal intricacies of licensing software for SoftXpand. We contacted Microsoft and MiniFrame for their views on operating system and Office licensing for SoftXpand.

 

Graham Arthur, Microsoft's corporate attorney in the UK, said that the company leaned heavily towards firms needing six separate operating system licences for this system.

 

Gordon Gazaway, Microsoft's programme manager for open licences, commented: "In situations like this, 99 per cent of the time just ask 'How would I license this if these were all normal desktop PCs?' and that will be the correct answer. "

 

 

Review: MiniFrame SoftXpand Business - V3.co.uk - formerly vnunet.com

 

 

 

It looks like thin clients are still required so it's based on terminal server.

 

http://www.displaylink.com/zero_client.html

Edited February 19, 2010 by cookie_monster

[SYNACK]

Apparently there was some kind of demo or stand at BETT 2010 that caught peoples eyes:

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/bett-2010/48109-what-must-haves-did-you-see-bett.html#post441097

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/50337-zero-client-boxes.html

[cookie_monster]

Apparently there was some kind of demo or stand at BETT 2010 that caught peoples eyes:

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/bett-2010/48109-what-must-haves-did-you-see-bett.html#post441097

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/50337-zero-client-boxes.html

 

 

 

I didn't get to BETT....again

[verygreenpc]

Hi guys,

 

"leaning heavily" means they want you to buy 6 copies of the OS but can't legally force you to. We have made repeated attempts to contact someone senior within Microsoft, but they have ignored us, and continue to do so. Having a disruptive technology does that.

 

They never come out and say 1 copy of the OS per user either, because they know that legally they cannot, so they just FUD everyone.

 

MPS2010 main differences are:

 

Server OS, requiring a MPS2010 CAL and TS CAL per user

USB to VGA adapter required or Displaylink or thin client access device

No balancing of graphics or performance unlike SoftXpand

Hefty main PC / server required for most applications

 

However, starting from scratch it sounds to me like a neat solution, and some guys on edugeek have had an evaluation of the HP server, thin clients running MPS2010, and were suitably impressed. They just couldn't give a good idea of the cost.

 

All SoftXpand sales are guaranteed by Miniframe.

 

Cheers,

Col

[Simoneverett]

At present i have a MS MuitPoint 2010 server setup in one of our class, i've for 10 uses running off 1!!!! WorkStation.

 

To be fair, i cant really call it a WorkStation. its a DELL T1500 with 8 core i7 and 8gb of ram, I am useing 9 HP MultiSeat t100 Thin Client. The current limiting factor is that USB on the T1500, the t100 dont like going vir a USB hub, it becomes very delayed and un responcive.

 

At first i was intrested in look at away to deploy as many seats with out the needed for 1 cat5 point and 2 power point per seat, after looking into the problem and whats currenly on the market it seem that MuitPoint has all the pros and cons of Termal Services but it dosent require large amounts of cat5 and switcheing.

 

I've looked a SoftXpand but it cost a lot more, and i wasnt totaly happy with their pants licencing problems, and the hardware

 

While doing alot of resertch i decoved almost all of the USB muit point hardware is basied on displaylink techlongly, good.. no. displaylink dont support server 2008 they dont support windows 7 they dont suppoer vista. they do have BETA drivers out, that dont work at all.

 

Hp have a very odd installer that contains some drivers that happen to work very well with MuitPoint 2010 64Bit and they do use a installer that looks like it belongs to displaylink, very odd. one think that did catch me out was make sure you have the HOSTS pc vga card install before you install the t100s. this will save you time scratching your head, and if you buy a T1500 for DELL for god sake make sure you take a note of the Vidio card before you install MuitPoint. i had to contact dell just to find out with vidio card i had. becuse they have about 10 opctions with this moddle and the card didnt have a make or model.

 

After ordeing some a number 12 t100 and the dell T1500 with had dual head DVI cards, so i can run 2 more seets with out any over heads, i had the hard task of finding a loction to test it, all schools are diffrent its the simple things that get you, i found a guinea pig and spent some time ziptying all the USB leeds desks anything that might dammage the Dell T1500.

 

MS recomd no more than 6 but say you can go up to 7-11 seets

Capacity Planning for MultiPoint Server

 

hp and MS also recomend the HP MultiSeat ms6000 to be used with mutipoint, my advice is GO I7.

 

Performance

 

I cant beleve my eyes, the first think i did was coppie a 720P vidio to the local HDD, and started it running useing VLC on the first 7 systems i had installed. i alwasy say, go big or go home.. theirs a little clipping bit total watchable i was watching 7 coppies of vidio audio sounds as good as any standalown pc. when you compare it to our other Dell 550s. i will admit the CPU load was at 80/90% i do belve this limmliting facter might have been the local HDD, its only a Sata drive, should have consied SAS.

 

I've had it in about a month now, had a number of class useing it 9/10 at 1 time, no problmes. The most the pupils have managed is about 30% load on the CPU when i have 2 of them on BBC iplayer 4 watching Youtube vidios and 2 playing flash games. 1hr later no complants.

 

1 think i must say, is with the T100 units, they have a USB b connection leading into the device, if this connection is disconnected/connected or a new t100 is connected to the box while uses are useing it, it dose clauses all clients desktop expercenec to stop dead for about 2/6 seconds while it adds the new t100.

 

The system dose use a lot of ram up, but no ware near the 8 gb its go.

 

Problems

 

Its Server 2008 64bit, 64bit IE dosent suppoer flash 10 uses have to use the 32bit verson,

Its Server 2008 64bit, 64bit for our HP printer arent avable

Its Server 2008 it uses v2 verson profiles, desktops dont sysn very well, easy to fix.

The T100 are PS keyboard and Mouse, ???? why? all the other opiction reauire external Power that i could find.

when the system is idle id dose use about 10/20% load all the time, its most likely the USB over heads, becuse USB dose relay on the host CPU to proccess its commands.

 

The feacher i like the most, pupils can move to another seet with out haveing to log off and back in again, say a pupil in useing the MutiPoint Server P1 he can disconect untill P3 when he loggs into a diffrent seet and gets the same open windows and only has to wait a few seconds not minits while the server finds his settings and GPOS.

 

I am more than happy to demo our muitpoint server to anyboy whos intrested thats in the debry city area im me if your intrested, this would need to be authrised by the school out of hrs. so far it's exceeds my expectations, 3 of setups could fit out a good sized it suite. i think we only payed about 2, 000 in total for the Workstation and the t100s

[SYNACK]

We are running a 4 seat unit with direct connected video over 2 cards, Just put MPS 2011 on and it seems more polished than the original, quicker to be ready and seems to have better control of the moniters. Unfourtunaly we don't have a pro gpu in there so remotefx does not work.

[plexer]

Simoneverett: The HP's are definately using displaylink tech DisplayLink: Virtual Graphics for Windows Multipoint Server 2010

 

I am getting their with my proposed multi head firepro 2460 system.

 

Just about to order bits to test with one gfx card and 4 x adaptors before I build a complete system.

 

Ben

[chazzy2501]

I looked into these a while ago. You can even build your own zero client, you'll need 1 usb hub, usb gfx,snd,kbd,mse. You could build a zero client for under £50...

 

I believe that can work with Active Directory, but really want to work as their own network. I felt it was aimed more towards primary schools.

[SYNACK]

I believe that can work with Active Directory, but really want to work as their own network. I felt it was aimed more towards primary schools.

 

The premium version works fine on a domain and gets full policies, domain logons etc just like our terminal server in our primary school.

[eean]

How is it different to Terminal Server?

[SYNACK]

How is it different to Terminal Server?

 

It basicly is terminal server with a console splitting layer. When the system boots it automatticly logs on to a special local user account that takes the span of all avalible moniters and limits the keyboards and mice tied to the identified USB hubs to a single screen, it then opens up one or more remote desktop sessions on each screen back into the local MPS server through a loopback adapter.

 

The big difference is just the custom layer that splits up the keyboard/mouse/usb device input/output per screen and the special shell that boots multiple RDP sessions.

 

You can actually now split moniters if you want to go even further with resource shareing, if you have a bunch of 22-24" 1920*1200 screens then you can just add another hub with keyboard/mouse and split it down the middle allowing two users on the one screen. Much less comfortable but a really good way to make even more use of resources.

 

There is also a little app that lets you manage multiple MPS servers, take control of screens, lock them, allocate hardware etc. This little app is very slow to open in the new version but can be quite useful especialy if it is being managed directly while the system is in use.

[Simoneverett]

my first muitpoint box was a DELL OptiPlex 745 system with built in dual head, i had to use 2 USB hubs with USB sound cards,

 

MutPoint Requires the USB sound card to be on the same USB hub as the Keyboard And mouse you want to use, at start up the sreens ask you to press a certin letter to pair the monitor up to the screen,

 

my first muitpoint test hasnt go so well, it crashed alot, could be hardware, its totaly serve 2008 64bit ready and powermanagemt seems to crash it. that said, its always a traid off between pure graphs.

 

I've not yet tested the dual head in my new Dell T1500 system, but i couldnt find a Dell box that was cheep enoth with 4+ vidio cards.. and becuse i am dell shop it seemed point less bulding a system my self.

 

Evey useing the HP USB t100 flash vidio is really good, bbc iplayer, we have some CAD software that wont work on anything that i am yet to try. but normal evey day programs work fine..

 

i feel its down to, if you think your pupils are going to unplug/robb the USB sounds cards then useing a big dual headed pc is ok, i saw this epesoid of hack 5 the other day their useing ATI cards and getting 12 Displays i think, its the 26foot bar bit your looking for..

 

[Simoneverett]

As i under stud it,

 

theirs a OEM verson that alows you to ONLY use local account point less for buniess

and

theirs a Edcudectoin verson that can be added to the domain, very use full, ours is from ms software assurance but you do need CALS per seet. just like termal services.

[Simoneverett]

Its over USB, this reduceds network laod and power points requirments and datapoints required.

[caffrey]

Got a flyer from lindy.co.uk yesterday with a usb user client for windows multipoint server (code 42660), 100 quid each tho.

Only problem I have with this system is if the main machine goes down you've lost 10 machines instead of just one

[plexer]

£100 is about the price point for usb connected client devices the ncomputing n170 is about the same.

 

My direct connected version comes in at about £85 of hardware per client.

 

Yes if the host goes down you lose the number of clients connected but a set of spares would overcome that.

 

Ben

[SYNACK]

The other thing to consider is if you are getting more users on a machine you can put that much more investment into good hardware to make them more robust. Ours are i7 based with mirrored hard drives, high quality low noise PSUs and much higher quality components that would be put into a standard box. At the moment we do direct connected and have four stations per machine but these can easily be upgraded for the price of a GPU and a couple of moniters, KBs and mice to take more.

 

Our ones are situated in the library so we went with silent GPUs and low noise PSUs all in a high quality, high air flow case, you can hear them running but only if you listen for them which is perfect for a library.

[plexer]

The gpu's I'm using are 4 port passive cooled so no extra noise from those.

 

I haven't gone full scale yet just started tested a 4 client version.

 

Production hardware is i7 with an SSD.

 

Ben

[SYNACK]

The gpu's I'm using are 4 port passive cooled so no extra noise from those.

 

I haven't gone full scale yet just started tested a 4 client version.

 

Production hardware is i7 with an SSD.

 

Ben

 

What GPUs are you using, the best I could find in my excuse for a country was two port (at once) passive cooled units.

[plexer]

Ati firepro 2460.

 

Ben

[SYNACK]

Ati firepro 2460.

 

Ben

 

Nice, that would support RemoteFX too, alas no one stocks such stuff here so we ended up with a pair of silent Radion 5600 cards.

[HaydonPeter]

I'm looking at an MPS installation.

 

HP in the UK don't seem to want to "support" T100 and are only offering me T150 or T200 but at £80/£105 respectively. I can get T100 for $50 plus duty which is what I propose to do unless anyone can give me good reasons not to.

 

I see there are some T100 users out there: are these systems still working fine for you?

 

The HP multi-seat comes with Classroom Manager which looks very neat too.

 

Cheers.

[Simoneverett]

I've got a Dell workstation core i7 Running up to 11 Clients using T100 no problems, HD Youtube happy runs on all 11 USB clients with only little bit of clipping,

 

 

It looks like the only difference between T100 and T150 is the USB keyboard and mouse options, finding/using USB keyboard and mouses for the T100 is a real pain. that a side T150's look like they need power to use the USB options.

 

Hope that helps..