Posts by dcouch

Reg readers speak out on Thin Client technology

Ugh... why would anyone chose a cloud solution for anything...

In brief, I have four terminal servers, Server 2008r2, native no Citrix. My terminal servers are virtualized under VMware, fast SAN etc... With the exception of Web videos my performance is very good from one end of my WAN to the other with about 200 users logged in at any one time.

I would switch to Server 2012r2 but it uses that stupid Windows Metro interface, my end user base had enough trouble switching from XP to Win7..

best regards.

dc

Thin clinets work!

Ok I would be dead without thin clients, here is my environment.

Five factories, six shipping terminals, several accounting offices, a corporate HQ and misc. outside offices.

The WAN stretches from north of Billings MT to Rocky Ford CO, about 700 miles end to end covering four states in the US. I am almost done upgrading the WAN to 10mb fiber which is really helping the environment. Ten years ago it was all fractional T1.

When I started 10 years ago we only had a few laptops/desktops and several hundred thin clients and while performance was not what I wanted the TC's running in a Windows 2003/Citrix environment was for the most part very good.

I have over 500 clients with the majority of them running Wyse thin clients. My current IT department is two hardware guys including me and a full time programmer.

Yes thin clients are not for every job we have but for the majority of our users it is a perfect solution. My upper management, engineers and people who whine enough get a laptop. I have around 2 thin clients for every laptop. The 2008r2 Terminal Severs that I put into service last year for the most part rock, really the only objection that I fight are people trying to stream full motion video across the WAN. Usually for web sites that are not business related.

Would I build the same environment today that I did years ago. Why yes, I could go on and on about the benefits like consistent look/feel regardless of where and what they log in with, from home or office. Data security, integrity, backups, software maintenance etc. but most of you probably already know the benefits. The rest of you probably do not have an environment that would benefit or you are stuck in the mind set that you need 1 computer for every 1 worker.

As far as costs go I am running the same thin clients that I purchased in 2010, in a manufacturing environment like we have I usually go through a desktop computer every year. Licensing from MS is about as straight forward as can be, plus I have the advantage of using device CAL's which allow several users each on different shifts to use the same hardware without consuming additional user CAL's.

thanks

Dave Couch