Thin ClientingJustin Spratt

What is thin clienting?

• Thin clienting is a form of cloud computing—running applications on a server rather than on a local PC.

• Traditional thin clients transmit computer I/O (video feed, mouse and keyboard) over the network.

A thin client with VESA mounts

Thin Clients vs. PCs

• Are small• Have few or no moving parts• Consume 5-10 watts• Store no local user data• Boot off of an embedded

operating system

• Are large• Have hard drives and fans• Consume 100-300 watts• Can store local user data• Boot off of an installed

operating system

PCsThin Clients

Pure Graphical Thin Clients

• Traditional thin clients receive a video feed from remote multi-user server such as RDP on Windows Server.

• Most of these solutions boot Linux and run a Linux version of the Terminal Services client to connect to an RDP server.

• These clients can start as low as $100

Mixed Thin and Thick

• Since some applications (such as multimedia) require thick clients, thin+thick clients have been created.

• Flash video in a web browser is one of the most difficult content types to handle, so one solution is to run the browser on the "thin" client.

Advantages of Thin Clienting• Direct, immediate savings

– Units cost $100-500 ($500-1000 for a PC)– Installation and setup are faster than with a PC– Running Linux is always* free– Only one copy of software is required– Power usage is 1/10th of a traditional PC ($6,000 per 100 PCs

per year)

• Indirect savings– Administration costs are lower– Roughly double the lifespan of a PC– Thin clients are far more durable than PCs– Reduction in data theft– Most clients are very difficult to infect with viruses

*not really

Diversity of Demand

• The graph illustrates the tendency of the requirement curve toward the mean consumption

• In other words, with n users using a single server, the power required is not n*power_per_user, it is closer to the average consumption of all of the users (e.g., take coffee breaks into account).

Diversity of Demand 2

• The graph illustrates the available power to an individual user on a thin client system.

• In other words, when you perform a very expensive operation (such as compiling a large project), more power is available (as most other users will be comparatively idle).

(given that capacity is increased for each additional user)

Key Applications• Schools (hint: like this one)• Libraries• Sales point• Development applications with

complex environments• Almost everywhere as latency

decreases and throughput increases