Converting Desktops to Thin Clients?

tfiedler asks: "I manage about 3500 desktop computers and was recently asked by my CIO to begin looking into thin client computing, something like WYSE terminals. I'd like to know, what are some good functional, and more importantly, manageable options to convert existing desktop computers into what would essentially be a Citrix terminal? I was thinking some brand of Linux that starts up an X11 session, starts the Citrix client and connects to our server farm. The user would see a Windows logon, our apps would function as normal and I'd get the benefit of performing a LOT LESS client-side maintenance. Any suggestions?"

Comments

sun ray's!

[Nova1313]

Check out sunrays. They are dirt cheap and they now have a windows version of the software. I use them at home they are really that easy to setup. We run a windows and a linux sunray server here. 2 Servers that I upgrade every 2 years and then we have about 10 terminals scattered throughout the house. I'm on one right now actually. It's a simple solution and fairly cheap to deploy.

Re:sun ray's!

[apachetoolbox]

After a minute or two of googling I think the Wyse S10 are a better choice. They connect to RDP servers and only cost about $280.

Re:sun ray's!

[dorath]

Sun Ray Clients.

Re:sun ray's!

[Nova1313]

no they don't connect to a terminal server. They use a propriatary protocol. You instead run sun's sunray server and then you get sound, usb devices, dual head support and access card use. I login to the main box and terminal server to anywhere else I need to go. I bought 2 of the sunrays brand new and the other 8 off ebay for like 20 bucks a pop. The brand new sunrays are the sunray 2's with dual head support. We originally used them where I went to school for my bachelors and I got into playing with them at the time. But they make it super easy to administer my entire house with them.

Linux terminal servers

[vinsci]

You're may be looking for the Linux Terminal Server Project.

Citrix

[celardore]

My old employer decided to update from 486s to thin client, this was a few years ago. I remember there being some serious problems initially. They ran a Windows 2000 server which the thin clients would connect to, but one day they got a worm... This rendered every single PC unusable, we couldn't type letters, work on spreadsheets etc. We couldn't even access the accounts, which is very bad for a finance department answering calls from customers.

It was fixed, but the downtime was costly, we could only really do filing. If your server goes down, then everybody is screwed. If everyone has standalone machines at least they can still do basic tasks.

Re:Citrix

[alienw]

It's a lot easier and faster to repair one server than it is to reformat and clear a few thousand client machines. You think you would have done much if all of the client machines got infected with a worm?

Re:Citrix

[pasamio]

I rmeember trying this onea few years ago. Someone opened a worm infected email 10 minutes before the scheduled antivirus update at 9am. It only took that ten minutes to take down the entire head office of the organisation with thousands of desktops infected. Funnily enough in some places Linux boxes were used as routers on some gigabit networks. One of the techs told me afterwards that it was laggy connecting to the computers because the gigabit links were full of this worm attacking the entire network. My mates got home at 9pm that day after disinfecting the entire network. So yes, whilst in client-server if the server goes down you can't work, but its still easy to fix one server than thousands of desktops. Plus the one (or more) servers are typically in one location physically, which makes things that require physically rebooting the machine easier (keeping in mind that your network is now shot with computers trying to infect each other and the rest of the internet).

Try pxes

[sfire]

Try PXES. I used it at a high school to netboot old desktops ( I think I used etherboot, with all nics embedded, so it didn't matter what nic was in the desktop), to download pxes, which would then connect to the X11 box to run all the applications. It features RDP, X11, NX, and others perhaps.Download here.

Re:No

[Rich0]

I dunno. No question that thin clients aren't going to work well for laptops and other offline scenarios. However, in many global companies a huge number of enterprise apps are moving in the direction of Citrix anyway - so they already need to maintain an airtight network or they're out of commission.

Why are they moving to Citrix? Simple - most client-server apps don't handle high latencies like you find in a WAN. All those database round-trips kill performance when you have 250ms latency. The only solutions are to move the front-end closer to the database, or the database closer to the front-end (or rewrite the front-end, which is hard to do when you don't have the source). Moving databases means all kinds of replication issues.

I actually consider the idea of thin-client computing fairly tempting. If I didn't have very-low-cost PC hardware available at home (hand-me-downs) I'd probably use thin-clients around the house for most of our systems...

Re:No

[Greyfox]

Sun's solution uses X11. Same difference.

Citrix is a last resort

[Anonymous Coward]

Citrix's main (and some would argue only) benefit is the ability to minimize the hassle of dealing with poorly written, bloated "enterprise" software.

I work for a company that just rolled out a new piece of software to 9000 workstations . The software was well over a gigabyte in hard disk space, required us to upgrade almost half our workstations, needs to be patched at least twice a month, and has serious issues with anything but a pristine network connection to the database (they require less than 40 ms latency and the software refuses to run on a wireless connection). We're looking at using Citrix JUST to handle this software. The downside is: Citrix is incredibly expensive. Last I heard, Citrix client licenses were somewhere in the neighborhood for 450 bucks a seat, in addition to TS cals, server licensing, and windows licensing. We ran a pilot Citrix farm with our nameless software and got 25 users per server. Each server had 4 gigs of memory and a pair of new dual core Xeons and cost about 6000 dollars apiece. If you're running reasonably well written software, Citrix isn't worth it.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ultimately the latencies are unacceptable, network outages paralize your entire company, "

We're already paralyzed when we have a network outage. Even the laptops become expensive bricks without a connection of some kind.

Don't take my word for it. Do the math. How many apps at your work need a network? I'll give you a starter list.

any corporate database
email
time sheets
booking travel
instant messaging
phones (got VOIP?)
payroll
every other accounting function
CRM
everything you do collaboratively
file sharing (no, not that kind, your network drives)
getting technical info
patches
AV updates

I hear people say, "if the network goes down, at least you can limp along if you have a local computer." Sure. You'll be limping like that knight in "The Holy Grail" who only had a "flesh wound." Using the network down issue as a reason not to go thin is idiotic. If your network goes down, you're screwed in either case.