jd20075 Posted February 12, 2011 Posted February 12, 2011 our school is looking at the possibility of a thin client network could you please tell me the pros and cons of using such a network in a large school all comments welcome many thanks jd20075
imiddleton25 Posted February 12, 2011 Posted February 12, 2011 pros are easy management, hardware that last longer and can depending on model use a lot less power. cons well we havnt found any really for us i am sure others will have some more to say on this
FN-GM Posted February 12, 2011 Posted February 12, 2011 (edited) Pros: Little maintenance eg dont need re-imaging, Antivirus, degfrag etc No moving parts Dont produce much heat so no need for aircon low power consumption Easier to deploy software. Thin clients have no moving parts. Thin clients are cheaper than desktop PCs and wont need replacing as often. Cons: no good for graphic intense applications, such as flash, photoshop, can struggle with video sometimes. no brilliant for sound programs. I havent tried this but apparently dont work with interactive whiteboard. But i may be wrong. Need to spend on some decent servers if you have a large amount. Paying for TS cals You can turn old computers into hardware by using thin station. This is something i am playing with at the moment and seems to work pretty well. Edited February 12, 2011 by FN-GM
morganw Posted February 12, 2011 Posted February 12, 2011 We've got 16 thin client laptops that connect to a terminal server running XenApp. Unless you run everything as a thin client you will actually increase you management overhead as you'll have to deploy software in the traditional way, and then duplicate the effort onto the thin client servers. We've also found that our network infrastructure will operate a fat client with no issues (bursty traffic) but will struggle to run the Citrix ICA session (constant data stream needed) without drop outs. If you've got the infrastructure, your applications will work with it (and people know to ask before buying new software), and it's designed with ease of managment in mind, then it does seem the obvious way to go though. If you go for the full blown VDI stuff then application compatibility isn't such an issue but requires much more investment in backend hardware.
jd20075 Posted February 12, 2011 Author Posted February 12, 2011 all these comments are grate guy please keep them coming
CyberNerd Posted February 12, 2011 Posted February 12, 2011 We've got 16 thin client laptops that connect to a terminal server running XenApp. Unless you run everything as a thin client you will actually increase you management overhead as you'll have to deploy software in the traditional way, and then duplicate the effort onto the thin client servers. you know that xenapp will allow you to publish applications to traditional desktops...
CyberNerd Posted February 13, 2011 Posted February 13, 2011 (edited) Pros: Little maintenance eg dont need re-imaging, Antivirus, degfrag etc No moving parts Dont produce much heat so no need for aircon low power consumption Easier to deploy software. Thin clients have no moving parts. Thin clients are cheaper than desktop PCs and wont need replacing as often. Cons: no good for graphic intense applications, such as flash, photoshop, can struggle with video sometimes. no brilliant for sound programs. I havent tried this but apparently dont work with interactive whiteboard. But i may be wrong. Need to spend on some decent servers if you have a large amount. Paying for TS cals You can turn old computers into hardware by using thin station. This is something i am playing with at the moment and seems to work pretty well. we have 300ish thin client and published apps to many more. flash is fine with xenapp, bad on rdp some additions - more pros: TS cals cost a lot less than Windows cals - it's a pro, not a con (second thoughts, MS licensing is a con...) management of stuff is a breeze much cheaper to run long term more cons: training (yours) thin client is poor for usb devices as the driver needs to be loaded on the OS (usually a cut down linux, often possible but more work) Some apps really don't work so well on TS - the ones that run at 50% cpu per user. Fine if you have xenapp published apps. not fine if you run a published desktop. large setup costs - licensing xenapp is expensive rdp needs xp client to run published apps ( add all all of the disadvantages of fat clients if you use rdp published apps on 2008 server) you need to convince management of the long term cost benefits - most school managers are oblivious to this edit: not really a con - but you must have a well managed network. Any problems with your network infrastructure will be exacerbated with TC's Edited February 13, 2011 by CyberNerd
FN-GM Posted February 13, 2011 Posted February 13, 2011 TS cals cost a lot less than Windows cals - it's a pro, not a con (second thoughts, MS licensing is a con...) If you have users cals is a big con. Say you have 1000 students and they could potentially use the thin clients you will have to buy 1000 cals. You can buy device cals for the 300 thin clients but then you cant use them if you want to give remove access from home.
CyberNerd Posted February 13, 2011 Posted February 13, 2011 If you have users cals is a big con. Say you have 1000 students and they could potentially use the thin clients you will have to buy 1000 cals. You can buy device cals for the 300 thin clients but then you cant use them if you want to give remove access from home. Agreed. You can get an external connector license though.
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now