cjohnsonuk

Looks like we are again. Why do the servers have to be offsite 30km away? Why not put them where they are needed and manage them remotely rather than manage them locally and deliver the apps remotely. Common sense. Think this is mentioned earlier in this thread as well, IINM I think it was you that raised this last time too... I also think if you read back through this you'll see we're not talking about 100% thin clients or 100% fat clients or that the thin clients are all server based as opposed to vdi, zero or any other flavour. Using the "zero" type David mentioned earlier the OS runs locally so all your local devices will work as before, IWBs would be no issue. For all intents is a fat PC, its just the disk is remote and the files are stored on a server. There is a school that, in my head I've pictured as being over near the east coast, that is predominantly thin client and linux based as well. I talked with them a couple of years ago when we were looking at a linux based thin client option on our network boot menu on our fat clients so that they could still be used for word processing, web browsing etc if the local windows installation failed. We've visited a 2ndary in Mansfield this year that uses Citrix to deliver applications to the desktop. They've had it as a managed service for a couple of years now and are very happy with the improvements in reliability and performance its brought. I think that a lot of the multimedia issues with "traditional" server computing based thin clients have only been resolved in the last couple of years so there won't be many schools that have yet taken the step and it usually is a pretty big step as there is usually a fairly high minimum number of workstations required to make it cost effective. When I looked we needed about 70 thin clients. Many schools replace less that this each year so its not a viable option short term unless you get an opportunity to swap it all out like BSF... I'm hoping to see some good demonstrations and cost comparisons at the BETT show. C U there? ChrisJ

Where did you get that from? Not saying you're wrong but thats not my experience... From wikipedia Serial ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "First-generation SATA devices often operated at best a little faster than parallel ATA/133 devices. Subsequently, a 3 Gbit/s signaling rate was added to the physical layer (PHY layer), effectively doubling maximum data throughput from 150 MB/s to 300 MB/s. For mechanical hard drives, SATA 3 Gbit/s transfer rate is expected to satisfy drive throughput requirements for some time, as the fastest mechanical drives barely saturate a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s link. A SATA data cable rated for 1.5 Gbit/s will handle current mechanical drives without any loss of sustained and burst data transfer performance. However, high-performance flash drives are approaching SATA 3 Gbit/s transfer rate." So although the SATA 3Gb/s interface supports 300MB/s mechanical drives can't yet provide the data fast enough to saturate a 1.5Gb/s or 150MB/s interface unless they are solid state making the virtual network drive faster assuming that the 200MB/s over the network has already taken off the TCPIP overheads.. Take into account the overheads of seek times etc for random access to the local disk (remember the max speed tests are most likely on sequential data) and accessing data from cache memory on the server over a 200MB/s link starts to look better by comparison (remember However all this might be academic as either system is likely to be fast enough. The benefits will come from the reliability, predictability and down time. If one of your 1000 school PCs local disk dies it might take an hour to get it swapped out. If an update takes all 1000 PCs down I'll let you calculate how long it would take to roll them all back. With a virtual disk you could just point the PCs at the previous non updated version to put them all back. CJ I was under the impression that a combination of drives, interfaces and disk seek times meant that although you could theoretically get 1.5Gb/s from a SATA drive if reading sequential data the overheads of seek times etc meant that it was closer to 70MB/s by the time you factored in random access. If the 200MB (not sure of the source on this but its a vague recollection) of OS files needed to boot the thin client are being pulled from cache memory on the server you don't have the seek time to factor in.

If you've got a good network (eg 1Gbps switched) and fast raid storage and cached storage on the server(s) serving the OS files are you likely to see a performance improvement (eg in boot up times, application start up times) than on a machine with a single local SATA disk? I would have thought that if your OS files are coming over 1Gbps network from the servers cache memory there is a potential increase in performance over a local file recovered over a 70Mbs SATA link just from the disk access speeds.

Presumably a streamed OS to a thin client would get over the traditional problem of whether an application is supported under "thin client" and whether local hardware is supported (eg interactive boards, data loggers, security dongles). As the software could be streamed and is running on the thin client with just the file storage for the os and apps virtualised the board/USB device will not know any different. ChrisJ

I'd say that its still a case that you need to use appropriate tech. in each area. In admin offices server based computing is fine as its unlikely they will be doing anything graphically intensive (legitimately as part of their daily tasks). Class front computers could be streamed/zero clients so that you have good graphical performance (although in most cases its only streamed apps or flash I see used). Classroom computers could be either streamed, VDI or classic thin clients, if I understand correctly when you authenticate onto the thin client it can choose which services you are permitted to access. So as a member of technical or teaching staff you may get a VDI session so that you can continue working in one session from any terminal no matter where you are working, for a student you may just get a classic shared session, admin staff may also be restricted to a shared session. If you have a media suite then put full PCs in there, I'm recommending macs based on our experience of them. Kids treat them with more respect, less desk space requirements and obvioulsy the option of running MAc or Windows on them AND you can run windows apps under MAc OS from the published applications on the Classic server based computing server. The issue isn't thin client/vs fat client here. If you had local "swap space" (ie a hard disk, but then its not so thin) in your desktop box you could stream the os to the desktop device so you still benefit from centralised OS deployment even if you end up with storage in each machine. The problem is the volume of data either way. 1hr of dv is 12GB, 40 minutes is 8GB, 20 students is 160GB of data. Unless they do all their editing locally then only upload the finished article you're going to have to get all that data to the server and then process it from the server during editing too. In either case, fat or thin the user will need local storage. IT /specialist suites should get fat PCs with multimedia applications installed. Day to day apps with no special requirements should be streamed to centralise administration and minimise local footprint. Offices should get thin clients, of a variety to suite their needs. Class front PCs is where you need to make a careful choice but if one wise device can be run as either a classic/vdi or zero thin client then it becomes a configuration issue rather than a purchasing one. You may even want to consider running Atom based PCs (which IMO run apps like google earth well) with RDP/ICA sessions set up to access other non graphical applications as server based applications. I'm ready to be corrected but many Atom based desktops now run on as little power as thin clients and take up about the same amount of space. I'm not sure how they compare in performance etc though. That would be an interesting comparison to make... DaveAngwin??? Anyone run IWBs of Atom PCs?

Anyone had any luck with getting lame installed (from a script) for this version? The scripts above don't seem to work. I've noticed that there is a version number in the registry entries... I removed the entries from the registry, restarted the PC but lame still worked so I wasn't convinced that these entries are the ones needed in 1.3.9. I'm planning on using sysinternals process explorer to check to see what changes are made whilst lame is installed through the application but just had to reinstall my test box and was hoping to save reinventing the wheel ChrisJ

I've seen Microsoft's surface and followed links to Cubit and others from links in other posts here but I'd wondered if anyone knew of anything similar to ebeam/mimio that could be put on any surface (including the floor) with a projector like Hitachi ED-A111 or Sanyo PLC51. Whilst were looking into BSF alternative displays thought that something like this would add a little extra something if we could turn a surface like a table into an interactive image that many people can sit round. With multitouch it adds a little more flexibility. Any suggestions? Ebeam and mimio on the same table?

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lzFpbGrPrg]YouTube- Citrix XenDesktop Customer - Collier County Interview[/ame] try this instead Sorry my mistake

Could you send me details on the cost savings you used in your application so that I can put a figure on the power savings please?

Thanks for all the replies. I accept there is a break even point in numbers of devices for them to become cost effective My arguements are that: 1) anywhere access (home, school, field trip) 2) from any device (students own laptops in school connecting via guest wireless less network back into school as if they are offsite, netbooks running software they wouldn't normally be able to meanign cheaper capital investment and ongoing costs (just heard of a BSF school stung for £5k for replacing vandalised laptops! Didn't budget for that!), iphones windows, linux, mac) 3) everyone uses the same software. Noone trying to bring in MS Works spreadsheets that have removed all the macros /changes everyone else put in that shared document!) 4) reduced power usage in school 5) reduced space 6) easier to secure (and less reason to nick one unless the bloke you're planning to sell it to down teh pub has a thin clietn server at home too!) 7) less requirements for technical intervention in the classroom (so better support as less time travelling) 8) less noise 9) less heat 10) less software deployed to the fat desktops (as it can be streamed or accessed remotely) reducing regression testing, reducing the complexity of the setup of each desktop, reducing reimage time (smaller images as less software), allowing software to be made available in any class at any time. Schools in the USA seem to have a different model and manage IT across a whole district and have been benefiting for some time from the "economies of scale" that BSF now promises in teh UK. Not sure why we couldn't do it that way... Check out [nomedia=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lzFpbG]YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.[/nomedia] for an example of a successful thin client installation. Also check out the other video interviewing the same guy 2 years previously when they were using something other than Citrix but now seem to have switched... I'll leave it for you to search this one out! ;0) Chris

Does anyone know of any BSF projects that are looking at using thin client for all or part of their IT service provision. I'm keen that we at least consider it as 1) we're in a listed building so any additional cooling required in new suites is going to be disproportionately expensive and also more expensive to run than no cooling. 2) I want to push anytime anywhere access to applications NOT data. What use is data if you can't process/use it. Schools may well be on office 2010 by then but if students have Macs, linux or just iPhones we're creating an unnecessary barrier. 3) our school runs many evening classes and I don't know what provision there is for support outside of the schools agreed hours. My experience is that thin clients require less in class support than fat PCs so there would be less problems and of those more that could be fixed without a site visit. 4) every other thin client benefit. Fat clients in specialist media suites (IT, DT, Music, Art), thin clients everywhere else with applications delivered either locally or virtually (Xen App) (reduced regression testing, quickly retasking a room for a different subject in case of timetable changes etc) I'm after some case studies, arguements for and against. But preferably some numbers to support my case for as it seems to be the obvious solution to many of the issues we currently expereince. Chris

Plans so far are for departments to have the same IWB within the department but not necessarily every dept having the same IWB brand. IT and maths prefer smart, chemistry have lots of preprepared resources in active studio. Art didn't know about visualisers until tonight's meeting but say one would be much more use than an IWB as the majority of their work is with mediums other than digital so being able to demo the use of pastels, charcoal, watercolours, oil paints etc on the big screen would be much better. They can use their pressure sensitive graphics tablets for digital interaction, a much better solution than the non pressure sensitive IWBs. I'm putting together a 16U flight case on wheels with built in everything (except a mains supply). We'll use this for use in both the temporary classrooms we'll have during the refurb. of our listed building and for evaluating as many sorts of "new tech" in as many departments as possible in until that time. Having it all in one case will minimise the set up time. With the number of additional meetings we're having as well it will be a useful tool in the various meeting rooms that don't have any IT either. Only problem is funding! However all the kits can be decanted out of the trolley into a classroom afterwards if its proved not to be a workable mobile solution. If I get it approved and anyone is interested I'll post some pictures/feedback... As there's no IWB and no installation costs it should be cheaper than a single room fixed installation.

David Some good points there! We've got senior teachers recommending that each department has a degree of variation in the services in their classrooms so that they can evaluate the effectiveness of each technology and benefit from the good points of both systems by swapping rooms internally within the department to allow use of different technology in different lessons. Then when we have the "staged" refresh money during the following years we can invest in those solutions that have produced the best results to replace the legacy kit we carry in at the start. Chris

When teachers walk round their lesson, to sit or work with different groups of students, if they've got to carry a mouse and keyboard with them to retain control of the PC at the front its more kit to carry. I struggled remembering to take the IWB pen back to the front of the class with me when I was training but Ihad been used to using a smart board We already force them to use IWBs which they didn't do 10 years ago, and the internet which we didn't do 10 years ago and sims which we didn't do 10 years ago. ANY change is going to annoy some staff. We can't pander to the few "annoyeds" if it prevents the rest moving forward. The "battery powered" comment related to the proposal of using digital cameras instead. VNC and most other remote control apps like this already just send the updates not the whole screen. That's still doubling up, costing in both capital outlay and tech time required to support them. Teachers having their own machines also starts moving back towards data on removable devices, something which has been highlighted in the press recently due to the huge amounts of data lost in this way. 120 servers still takes a lot of supporting. If we assume each of these supports a maximum of 20 clients compared to 50-60 for a full server then when it comes to installing a new application there are a lot fewer servers to install on, to patch etc in a "proper" thin client server environment and with the technology coming now they can power down when the demands are low saving power and thin client sessions can hot swap to a new server when one is taken down for upgrade/repair. In your scenario even if only 1 student thin client was being used in each classroom that's 120x 20w (thin client) + 120x 150w (classroom servers) being used vs 120x 20w (thin clients) + 2x 500W (server room thin client servers). You can see the sorts of power savings. Personally I wouldn't trust some of our staff to be in control of a power button that was connected to a machine running the thin client sessions for the rest of their class. "Whoops! I was just rebooting as the last person left their session logged in and the screen locked, it was the only way I could get to log in...". We're still at the stage in or IT capability development where classroom PCs are reported as not working when they haven't been switched on. Strangely pressing the power button seems to resolve this issue! Aaargh! This was more for areas where IT isn't required all the time (DT workshops where there may be a lot of dust, drama studios where they are moving props round a lot, meeting rooms etc). BSF is still limited. And schools will have to continue to use the kit after BSF so making a wise choice now will impact on available spending in the future. Why have £15k of kit in 5 classrooms where its only used 10% of the time when you can have a mobile solution and save £12k. Do this for 15 classrooms and with a 3 year replacement cycle you've got yourself an extra member of staff out of the savings...

Flip top desks in every classroom? We've used these for the teachers and they've smashed over 20 screens. They put the mouse on top of the keyboard, shut the screen and then when they feel resistance (ie the mouse on the screen) they just press harder. No-one has yet reported this, it takes the next teacher to use the computer to report it. So for us, there will be no more flip top desks. Also bear in mind that your work surface tips up when you open the desk. We would not have a full suite in every classroom, that's serious overkill. We used a really low spec 4GB server and got over 30 clients on it using an old version of citrix and the performance for desktop apps was better than all but the top spec desktop PCs. Most of the stats I've seen suggest at least 50-60 clients per server in a shared environment or approx 30 full virtual workstations per server. Obviously that all depends on the server spec but typically 4/8 core and 16GB ram which isn't over the top. Combine Citrix with Appsense to give a consistent controlled desktop. My proposal is to use iMacs in specialist IT suites to allow teachers the choice of OS. Windows apps can either be run using a citrix client or installing windows locally on the macs, either with boot camp or virtual box/parallels/fusion. Our latest sanyo xe33s have a network socket allowing you to control the power that way. This looks great. I saw this about 6 months ago at a citrix tech preview but there were NDAs at the time.

We've used GYRATION kit too. Only downside is you can't easily write and that keyboard and mouse is two things to carry round. This would have to be included in the rules for teaching practices that assessments using the system were carried out every N weeks. I agree. They'd tend to go missing, flat batteries, no live preview etc Tried this about 5 years ago with no other wireless clients on an HP tablet on wireless G and the control was not fluid to the point of not being usable. VNC /RDP compression may have improved since then. That also means 2 PCs per classroom! Thanks for the reminder though. I'll wait for the Apple tablet.... Do you really think 120 thin client servers (as we have 120 classrooms) would be manageable? I supopse its a matter of economies of scale and matching the solution ot the size of school. We're hoping to enable remote access to applications as well so the servers (or at least some of them) need to be in a datacentre. Some rooms (library, main hall, dining hall, sports hall, foyer etc) just don't lend themselves well to fixed intallations, especially in a listed building (yeah, I have that to deal with too!) And fixed kit can go wrong. We want a quick fix (<10 minutes) and the trolley seems to fit that well. If you can't afford a CRS or visualiser per class then the trolleys can be set up so that you can book them out just for when its needed We used Skype really effectively, you just have to choose and place your mic carefully so it picks up the class but not the speakers ChrisJ

Unfortunately were so near being BSFed theres little chance we'll get to take on new project like this. Our data server has 16 1TB drives hung off the back so its more than just a little commitment for us to even look into the feasibility. Chris

With ZFS under solaris supporting dedupe natively (from what I've read) has anyone considered using a Solaris/Samba/CIFS/ZFS solution for data storage? As most of our students' work is going to be similar to a greater extent than that of IT users in industry and as teacher generally share resources for use in multiple classes I think school data is a prime case where dedupe will bring benefits. It would be good to see a case study and what benefits were realised. Anyone know of any success stories like this? ChrisJ PS A link to a comparison between Solaris 10 and opensolaris would be appreciated too. From what I can see both are free but which should I choose?

Has anyone found any good resources on the application of new technologies in classrooms? We're at the point of deciding what tech we want in our BSF classrooms. IWBs have just been used as projector screens in the majority of our lessons, nothing a touch screen costing 1/4 of the price wouldn't achieve. Things I've got down so far are : Class response systems (remote handsets/ask the audience) (getting the students to interact, more frequent and comprehensive feedback of class understanding of the subject taught and on the method of teaching allowing quantitative evaluation of changes in teaching style or content and easier collection of continuous assessment data) Visualisers Why hunt for a digital copy of Shakespear when there is a book in front of you. Why have 30 kids crowded round the front bench to see the prep/experiment when they can see it on the big screen. Touch screens /tablets So that teachers don't spend half their time with their back to the class whilst writing on the board. Weren't we writing on boards 150 years ago. Surely there are better methods of interacting with the class. netbooks and thin clients Small low power devices with centralised management and applications so that the applications are separate from the delivery hardware allowing a wider use of hardware at the desktop but with a consistent user interface. Remote access to applications, not data. Keep the data safe. No more lost USB drives. Provide access to the set of applications available in school, not relying on everyone having a matching set of applications at home, minimising the chance of someone editing the sims xml file in Mac office 2008 or OpenOffice.org and completely screwing it all up for everyone. AV trolleys with everything in Short throw projector, mic, speakers, web cam, visualiser, PC, Touch screen, UPS, to allow any space into a learning environment. (We've got most of this down to about £2500 (TBC) atm incl 4GB mac mini with windows and MS office license). If anyone knows of any resources that may help and specifically on how we can change the layout/environment of the classroom to improve learning even if that isn't related to technology that would be greatly appreciated. Any information supporting the integration of mmedia into the curriculum outside of ICT as a subject and enabling students to create coursework for all classes in media types other than that destined for print ie using podcasts, video, blogs instead of publisher and word would aslo be appreciated. Many of our teachers just haven't had tiome to catch up ans see what is possible. I want to be able to show some good examples, preferably backed up with evidence of some kind. Thanks ChrisJ

Sumvision Cyclone Micro Media Player Divx & ISO HDMI USB/SD Media player HDMI 1080p Upscaling - Ebuyer We've got one on order

I've tried this. I downloaded Activdriver_x32_v5.1.2.7_setup.exe today. ran the program and copied the files from C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp\{740A5A30-48DA-460D-BE55-6412D0F28A2B}\ to a network share Directory of X:\ActivBoardDrivers\Extract 22/09/2009 12:20 . 22/09/2009 12:20 .. 22/09/2009 12:16 12,014 0x0401.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 6,692 0x0404.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 14,582 0x0406.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 15,904 0x0407.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 13,660 0x0409.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 15,750 0x040a.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 14,184 0x040b.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 16,132 0x040c.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 11,696 0x040d.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 15,492 0x0410.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 8,848 0x0412.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 15,292 0x0413.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 14,296 0x0414.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 14,640 0x0416.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 14,542 0x0419.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 13,840 0x041d.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 14,220 0x041f.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 6,776 0x0804.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 13,660 0x0809.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 15,276 0x0816.ini 22/09/2009 12:16 3,584 2057.MST 22/09/2009 12:16 12,233,216 Activdriver.msi 22/09/2009 12:16 2,961 Setup.INI 22/09/2009 12:16 4,768 _ISMSIDEL.INI 24 File(s) 12,512,025 bytes 2 Dir(s) 171,361,792,000 bytes free and double clicked the msi (as a user with local admin rights) at which point I get the message The installation package could not be opened. Verify it exists. So I mapped a drive to see if it needs a drive letter mapping but got the same. I've got about 80 to do so want to avoid doing it manually if at all possible. Running Activdriver_x32_v5.1.2.7_setup.exe /? Gives a list of options one of which /S says its silent, but guess what. On my XP pro machine its not! Help! (please;)) ChrisJ

After experiencing slowness in using a shared location for startmenu folders last year we've tried to crack this and "the local apps in network menu even when the applications aren't installed locally" issue by copying the startmenu and desktop folders locally. We've got a script that copies the icons for the network applications and the icons for the applications that are installed locally to a local folder (so that staff don't have icons for applications that are not installed, causes to much confusion) c:\ui\desktop\staff or c:\ui\desktop\students c:\ui\startmenu\staff or c:\ui\startmenu\students I've got a policy set to redirect My Documents to the users' network folder and this works. I've got a policy set to redirect desktop to the local folder c:\ui\desktop\staff but this doesn't work. I've changed this to %systemdrive%\ui\desktop\staff , run gpupdate, rebooted, removed the local user profile, restarted, logged in again and it doesn't work. The workstations are XP Pro SP3 with client side extensions installed. The servers are 2008 SP2 (not R2). There are no errors in the eventvwr relating to GPOs and folder redirection. There was some talk of users needing to own the folders but this can't be the case as they didn't own the shared network folders last year and that did work, albeit slowly! Staff accounts used for testing can be browse the local folders. Any help appreciated Chris

OK, I got the install working great! Customised the msi using orca. But I now need to get the uninstall working silently! If I run "msiexec /x/qn mycustomactivstudio3.msi" it throws an error listing the possible msi command line options. If I just use the /x option it prompts me yes/no in a windows dialogue box. Any suggestions how I can uninstall this silently? Our application deployment system (wpkg) works better if its deployed whilst configured with the correct uninstall command. Chris

So is there any benefit of using one method instead of the other? Apart from the errors I'm gettingusing the GUID

We use wpkg (Main Page - WPKG | Open Source Software Deployment and Distribution) to deploy software to our workstations The silent install xml files listed often use MSIEXEC to install the software silently eg : Foxit Reader - WPKG | Open Source Software Deployment and Distribution These are pretty standard lines. However the uninstall lines tend to come in two flavours and I don't know what the difference is between these two different methods. Can anyone tell me what the difference is please? Sometimes the msi file is used Sometimes a string similar to the following is used. Is this code always the same for all computers installing that software? How do you find out which code (is there a name for it?) relates to which application? Is there a preferred method or one that is considered best practice? ChrisJ