How Many Desktop PCs Can One Server Replace?

NZheretic asks: "HP has just announced that they have upgraded a four-processor server with Advanced Micro Devices' new dual-core Opteron. The amount of processing power a multi-processor multi-core system can deliver seem like a waste of processing power for most traditional servers, which are more likely to suffer from disk access bottlenecks before lack of processing power becomes a problem. But what if that power could be delivered direct to the desktop users? The HP ProLiant DL585 supports eight 64-bit PCI-X I/O Slots (Six 100MHz, two 133MHz). The ATI FireMV(TM) 2400 supports Quad DVI/VGA displays on PCI Express. Assuming that you leave one PCI-X slot for a multiport USB card, thats up to twenty eight displays with USB keyboards,mice and headsets that could theoretically replace twenty eight networked desktop PCs. Using DVI and USB extenders, not all of the user stations would have to be within the 7.5 meter cable distance imposed by the DVI cable limit. The only OS currently capable of supporting this many displays is Linux. What limits would be imposed by the hardware and PCI-X bottlenecks? Taking into account the added cost of the HP and ATI hardware, could it deliver a great reduction in the total cost of ownership over both traditional PCs and thin client systems? How many desktops is it practical for a high end server to directly replace?"

Comments

One Giant Step Backward

[TripMaster Monkey]

I'm sorry, but this is one of the dumber products I've seen out there.

The software retails for $99 per workstation, and this gets you only one year...additional years are $29, again per station.

Add to that cost the cost of all those dual-headed video cards, USB cards and hubs, and DVI and USB extenders, and your total cost is not at all inconsequential. And for all this work, you have a maximum of 10 users to a server? Plus, those users are physically tethered to the server, severely restricting your network design.

It seems to me that all this and a lot more could be accomplished with less money and less hassle via some very low-end systems and VNC. In fact, that's how I'm accomplishing it right now.

ltsp

[tka]

The power can be direct to users via Linux Terminal Server Project. Use a gigabit network and you can have lots of users. But why would someone buy it if it has too much processing power for their needs?

Linux is no good

[keesh]

Linux treats all keyboards and mice as a single input source, so you'll need to get patching if you want more than one active user at a time...

SunRay + V480

[Tsunayoshi]

How the hell is this any different/better than using SunFire servers and Sunray thin-clients? A Sunfire V480, 4 900mhz UltraSParc III processors, 16 GB RAM, mirror 73gb disks. This system ran 100+ Sunray thin clients all running continuously updating graphical simulation displays with 3 or 4 other semi-rigourous processes, on a 100mb LAN. All data and programs were NFS mounted. The V480 was ~$40-50K + $300/sunray (already owned monitor and file server).

The system was spec'd by Sun to handle those 100 sessions. The head engineer bought two and set them up to load-balance and provide redundancy.

This isn't anything new...move along.

Mainframe?

[angst_ridden_hipster]

In the old days, there was one big (relatively) powerful computer with a bunch of terminals hanging off of it. This computer was called a Mainframe.

As time went on and miniaturization progressed, people wanted their own department computer, so they could have more CPU time available.

Then they wanted their own desktops.

Then they wanted to network their desktop machines, so they could share data.

Then some applications started sharing CPU and other resources over the network.

But all these networked machines were a big configuration hassle for IT. They envisioned "thin clients" and similar solutions.

Now machines are so powerful that users can have their own virtual PCs running on a central server, so they can just have dumb terminals on their desks.

There's a lesson in here somewhere. As soon as the network comes back, I'll google for it and find out what that lesson is.