Hi,

I am considering jumping into terminal services for the first time by implementing a thin client setup for the users in one of my small business clients. So I have a couple of newbie questions that I have not been able to find answers for yet:

1. Application licensing: How is application software licensing handled in a TS thin client environment? Let's say I install office 2003 on the server for 12 users to access. How are the product keys managed so that I'm all legal? Do I just use one product key on the installation, and as long as I own a total of 12 legit licenses (even if they're in storage) I'm ok? Or is this handled some other way?

2. Capacity planning: For various reasons, I need to use guidelines for capacity planning instead of actual testing and monitoring. The guidelines I've been able to find so far are between 9MB and 20MB per user for basic usage of 2-3 applications. Given that the users in question will mostly be using ms office (mainly outlook) and one DOS-based payroll app, are those figures reasonable?

3. Thin client vs. Full desktop: How should I determine whether someone can have a thin client or if they need to have a full desktop? I know that high-end apps like 3d modeling etc require a full PC, but what about other random apps like say iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc (or are media apps pretty much out of the question for thin clients)? Is this mostly figured out through testing and experimentation?

Thank you in advance!

Shenan

Shenan wrote:

Hi, I am considering jumping into terminal services for the first time by implementing a thin client setup for the users in one of my small business clients. So I have a couple of newbie questions that I have not been able to find answers for yet: 1. Application licensing: How is application software licensing handled in a TS thin client environment? Let's say I install office 2003 on the server for 12 users to access. How are the product keys managed so that I'm all legal? Do I just use one product key on the installation, and as long as I own a total of 12 legit licenses (even if they're in storage) I'm ok? Or is this handled some other way?

With Microsoft software it's done on a trust basis. There are other software venders which don't like it, Autodesk for instance, and as a result their software isn't compatible. Having said that there are a number of software providers that add management functionality to TS which includes a licensing repository - AppSense are quite prominent over here in the UK.

Quote:

2. Capacity planning: For various reasons, I need to use guidelines for capacity planning instead of actual testing and monitoring. The guidelines I've been able to find so far are between 9MB and 20MB per user for basic usage of 2-3 applications. Given that the users in question will mostly be using ms office (mainly outlook) and one DOS-based payroll app, are those figures reasonable?

That's a difficult one to answer, although that seems like a reasonable estimation.

Quote:

3. Thin client vs. Full desktop: How should I determine whether someone can have a thin client or if they need to have a full desktop? I know that high-end apps like 3d modeling etc require a full PC, but what about other random apps like say iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc (or are media apps pretty much out of the question for thin clients)? Is this mostly figured out through testing and experimentation?

Testing is always the key because it's different in every scenario. There are several ways of approaching it however. If your aim is to centralise, then you should do your best to centralise as much as is humanly possible.

3D modelling is generally workstation material, so isn't suitable for any server based computing environment (streaming, VDI or thin client). Pretty much anything else is doable, although you may need to look at different deployment methods. I'd recommend having a peek at some of Wyse's products. They've got the WSM (Wyse Streaming Manager) and the TCX Software Suite. WSM lets you stream whole OS's and Apps to local devices, where they are executed. This is easy for your servers, but bandwidth intensive so not suitable for WAN. TCX allows you to do 2 things:
1) Bypass the RDP stream for multimedia traffic, meaning media rich applications can run no problems.
2) USB virtualisation which lets you run pretty much any peripheral locally.

Having a mixture of their products might work in your environment as you'll still be able to manage everything from a single location.

Hope this helps

Simon

c1 Systems - Thin Client, Virtualisation, SAN Storage