thin clients, more fad than substance?

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holden j caufield

Gawd
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Mar 27, 2012
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Has anyone used these for awhile and thought they were worth the hassle? I'm just demoing it but it seems like a lot of admin and the licensing costs are more than I thought. I'm thinking they're not as much upside as I thought.
 
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VDI in general hasn't proven to be worth the hassle in many cases.

At least, unless those that setup the VDI really know what they're doing, scope the hardware correctly, set appropriate SLAs with the users, the correct hardware is used and configured for use with VDI, etc. then it's hard to make VDI worth the hassle. Definitely not saying it can't be, but, like a house of cards, one or two small missteps in the design and implementation and the whole thing doesn't work properly. Assuming all that is done right, it's still hard to get a good ROI on the whole endeavor.

For some businesses simply having the workstations virtualized, despite it not being all that much cheaper, is worth it.
 
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We have VDI with Citrix and VMware at the place I'm contracting for currently. It works well until something like a SAN delay freezes everyone's session. Or road construction severs a fiber line and brings down everyone at remote branches.
I hear that the Server 2008 R2 version of VDI is actually pretty polished.
 
Thin clients have been around a while. They definitely have their place.

Here are a couple of things to thing about for them:
1. No moving parts: no need to deal with a HDD or fan dying.
2. No data at the endpoint: device walks off, data is still in the datacenter.
3. No administrative overhead for stuff like Windows Updates.
4. Quick deployment, just plug it in and point it to your session broker.

But yea, there is never an ROI with VDI when you look at hardware and licensing costs. It's the soft numbers like manpower, productivity, and compliance/data loss.
 
Is anyone currently using any form of offline VDI (in which the OS image is downloaded to the local client, and run on local hardware, on top of a hypervisor)?
 
I use zero clients at work and one of my small business customers.

best reason for use at work.....replacing a PC that fails means I don't have to interrupt a room producing TV shows, just point the zero client to another machine/VM

best reason for use at my small business.....auto shop, very dirty environment..no moving parts, just point it to a VM.
 
geiger said:
Thin clients have been around a while. They definitely have their place.

Here are a couple of things to thing about for them:
1. No moving parts: no need to deal with a HDD or fan dying.
2. No data at the endpoint: device walks off, data is still in the datacenter.
3. No administrative overhead for stuff like Windows Updates.
4. Quick deployment, just plug it in and point it to your session broker.

But yea, there is never an ROI with VDI when you look at hardware and licensing costs. It's the soft numbers like manpower, productivity, and compliance/data loss.
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Exactly.
 
Our VAR tried to sell us a VDI for regular office use as a stepping stone into teaching lab deployments. At the time the price tag for that was close to 200k for 150 clients and that just made no sense to us at all, especially considering that the PCs are all managed with Active Directory and SCCM anyway.

Now I am deploying a 25 client test VDI for classroom use and things are looking pretty good. Will run that for a year and then buy it for all the labs (~250 clients).

For classroom/teachning VDI is awesome. Deploy images for specific classes, don't bog stuff down with apps that don't have to be present, add apps mid semester for a specific class without having to worry about how that change will affect all other users of the lab.

Whether we would ever deploy it to the office computers is questionable at best, especially with a large number of mobile users.
 
dbwillis said:
I use zero clients at work and one of my small business customers.

best reason for use at work.....replacing a PC that fails means I don't have to interrupt a room producing TV shows, just point the zero client to another machine/VM

best reason for use at my small business.....auto shop, very dirty environment..no moving parts, just point it to a VM.
Click to expand...


That is exactly a great usage for thin client.
We unfortunately aren't allowed to use thin clients and that's why we had to buy expensive industrial PC for production.Thin client would be great for that environment.
 
I think we need to explain the difference and I believe there is a big difference between Thin Client and Zero Client. Thin Clients have a full OS whether that's Windows Embedded or some Linux Variant. This means you have to buy licensing for the OS, and you have another OS to manage, waste in my book.

Zero clients are really devices that carry a very small embedded OS so that users can connect. There is an easy interface for settings..etc which make them very attractive, no additional licensing cost, and very simple.

VDI isn't about a one to one cost savings relationship between Desktops. As a matter of fact most of the time, it's a bit more expensive on the hardware/software front, and of course Windows VDA is still costly.

The savings is in managabilty, ease of use, response time for PC related issues, etc, and sometimes Power savings in larger environments.

After several rollouts in all size organizations, one thing holds constant, you will only reap the benefits of VDI from the initial investment into it, meaning a strict following of the VDI implementation model:

1. Assessment
2. Proof of Concept
3. Pilot
4. Load testing/validation
5. Phased Rollout
6. Monitoring <---very important and often missed.

During this process there will be a setup of best practice and scaled to fit your environment. It is also an opportunity to upgrade, get profiles in order, and what I find the most important, making sure your OS image has been configured to run lean as it relates to performances vs functionality.

Is VDI worth it for all customers, absolutely not, but you won't know that without some quantitative analysis and business model.
 
My old school uses Linux thin clients. When I went there they used a package designed for schools called the K12LTSP - k-12 Linux Terminal Server Project. That project died, so now they use Ubuntu LTSP. It worked great in that environment. They used donor machines for the terminals, didn't have to worry about students destroying or running off with them. The best part, if one breaks, just swap it out with a new one from storage. The user logs in and keeps working like nothing happened. They also had a server dedicated to remote access via NX Clients, which gave students secure access to their documents from home.
 
Vader said:
I think we need to explain the difference and I believe there is a big difference between Thin Client and Zero Client.
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Was waiting for this post.

Huge difference, often overlooked and I've caught clients purchasing thin clients on accident just by not knowing the difference.
 
Several years ago, I ran an installation of about 50 NeoWare (now part of HP) thin clients. They were essentially zero clients, running an embedded Linux OS, that provided just enough functionally to establish an RDP session at boot time to a set of Windows servers with Terminal Services.

The infrastructure worked OK for its use-case (a bank of public-use computers in a public library). And management was very centralized, with all configuration (app and OS) being done on the servers. The downside was poor video performance (sites like YouTube). A thin client with a locally installed browser, flash player, etc would have performed better, but with more management overhead.

I've read that the latest version of the RDP protocol (Server 2008 R2 and above) resolves some of the video performance issues. Though, I haven't supported this kind of environment in a while, so I don't have any firsthand experience with the latest RDP version in a thin client environment.
 
Teradici Zero clients are awesome. With the pcoip management console server setup (free - unlike other vendors) all you have to do is literally pull the thing out of the box and put it on the network. The pcoip mc will automatically configure it and you're good to go. If you need, you can also apply a label (think host name). Crazy easy.
 
Yes SpaceHonkey, PCoIP console works great, we use it to push out firmware updates, but we use Ericomm for our broker currently (3 sites with 3000+ devices)
 
I work at a place that supports multiple large companies. All of them are moving from traditional PC-based environments to thin clients and citrix on my company's server farms.

Aside from transition pains and the current inability to access the C:\ drive on locked down PC's running Wyse pc extender, it "just works"

Downsides include not being able to have users access things like command prompt to find out their unit's ip address because it's all locked down and disabled (write filters and so on).
 
waderunner said:
They were essentially zero clients, running an embedded Linux OS
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Second statement contradicts the first.

Don't get salty on video quality over RDP... Watch it over a real zero client with a t-chip over PCIOP before making your final opinion over virtual desktops as a whole.
 
Here's what I've been doing at our company... you don't have to read the article, but check out the background of the picture.

http://www.ohio.com/lifestyle/crystal-clinic-expands-operations-1.407936

That's a 23" class LG Monitor with zero client built in mounted to the wall. Our doctors are using View and Imprivata Single Sign-On to "tap in" to their virtual desktops to show the patients their x-rays from our digital radiography system. When they leave the room, they "tap-out" and walk over to a clinical station to "tap in" again and resume right where they left off. We have three of our clinics moved to a system like this and are planning on retrofitting the other nine in the next year as well.

I can't stress enough how good VDI can be for healthcare (when done right).

... and I can't stress enough how good VDI can be for your IT department as well (when done right) ;)
 
Dytrails, I'm actually doing the same thing where I work. View + Imprivata + Zero clients can't be beat with a stick. You wouldn't believe (actually, working in healthcare you would) how many problems this solution solves for us. And you also probably wouldn't believe how hard I had to fight with upper management to get the thing purchased. I can't wait to see the look on the CEO's face after he gets to use what he fought so hard against.
 
geiger said:
Thin clients have been around a while. They definitely have their place.

Here are a couple of things to thing about for them:
1. No moving parts: no need to deal with a HDD or fan dying.
2. No data at the endpoint: device walks off, data is still in the datacenter.
3. No administrative overhead for stuff like Windows Updates.
4. Quick deployment, just plug it in and point it to your session broker.

But yea, there is never an ROI with VDI when you look at hardware and licensing costs. It's the soft numbers like manpower, productivity, and compliance/data loss.
Click to expand...

OH GOD I agree with this SO HARD
 
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