mwok

Well, I got two HTPCs, main pc, HTPC server, and a dev server. I recently upgraded 3 of the machines to be passively cooled and now they emit high pitched frequency noise in a quiet room (due to poor motherboard design). My goal is to move them all into the basement, virtualize them all, and use zero clients.

I have about 6 home PCs that use up about 80-100watts while idle and would like to replace them all with a zero client setup (I know very little about thin clients). I don't know which thin client server software to use. There is XenDesktop, Vmware View (too expensive), and Hyper-V. I'd like to chose one that has the best graphical performance. Two of the PCs are HTPCs therefore will need to use Windows Media Center, netflix (silverlight 1080p), and Amazon VOD (flash 480p). I know Microsoft is coming out with RemoteFX soon that gives a real user desktop experience and from the demos, it looks like it supports graphic intensive applications. 1) Will a zero client and any of the virtualization software above support real 3d acceleration? (I know Hyper-V won't support it without RemoteFX which is coming out soon) 2) If all of the virtual machines are idle, can the server go to sleep or even hibernate? 3) Is there a ZeroClient with dual DVI (or hdmi even) and at least an optical audio out? 4) How does the zeroclient know which VM to boot from? Is there a setup interface?