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1 Replies Last post: Jan 9, 2009 6:05 AM by nick.couchman
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Using iGel thin clients with ESXi Embedded

Jan 8, 2009 7:42 PM

Click to view aboh's profile Novice aboh 16 posts since
May 19, 2007

Hi Everyone,

I have been using a combination of RDP and VI Client to work with my VMs. I have a client who wants to virtualize 8 workstations and phase out desktop systems. I have no experience with replacing physical workstations with thin clients. My experience is with accessing my VMs from a physical computer... So... I reviewed the certified thin clients out there and am very interested in iGel's products, especially since they are VMware VDI approved, but I have a few simple questions... Please don't laugh too hard! :)

1) How do I connect the thin client to my VMs on the ESXi Embedded Server? I assume that I tell them to connect to the VM's IP address, but what protocol is used? RDP? VDI?

2) If I can use either RDP or VDI, are there licensing concerns/Purchases that must be addressed?

3) If I can use either RDP or VDI, is there an advantage of one over the other?

4) I noticed that the iGel thin clients have USB ports on them. Are they available to the user when they are connected to their VM on the embedded ESXi Server? My understanding was that ESXi Server does not support USB devices.

5) I am trying to keep initial costs to a minimum for this client and hope that I do not have to immediately move them to Infrastructure 3 due to other start up costs. I want to migrate them to I3 next year, if possible or if major technical issues arise. Must I buy any VMware licenses at this point? When we orded our Dell PowerEdge 2900iii server with the ESXi Embedded Server, the description said "VMware ESXi v3.5 with VI3 Ent Trial, No Subscription, 2S, Embedded, USB". What are the limits of the "VI3 Ent Trial"? I've investigated and I think that it simply means that we can download the 60-day trial of VI3 Enterprise and that we have no technical support from VMware at this point. Otherwise, we are good to go with our single host and ESXi Embedded Server. Right?

Thank you for your help, mentoring, and ideas!

Mike

Reply Re: Using iGel thin clients with ESXi Embedded Jan 9, 2009 6:05 AM
Click to view nick.couchman's profile Champion nick.couchman 4,969 posts since
Jan 13, 2006

1) Most likely you will be using RDP. I don't think VDI is really all that much its own remote display protocol - it's really just a protocol to manage RDP connections.

2) Well, yes, there are. You need to have each copy of Windows XP (I assume that's what you'll be using) licensed correctly. Depending on what VDI product you use, there may be a charge for that, too. VMware's VDI Manager isn't free.

3) As I said, I think you'll be using both of these together. If given a choice of using RDP by itself vs. RDP + VDI, VDI certainly has the advantage of allowing you to manage the connections to the VMs - e.g. assign certain users to VMs, pool the VMs, etc. RDP only would mean manually mapping users to VMs.

4) This has nothing to do with ESXi - this has to do with whether or not the thin client and Windows XP can talk well enough to get the USB ports across to the Windows computer. Some thin clients won't actually forward the raw USB ports, but will forward certain device information from the USB ports. For instance, if you have a thumb drive connected to your thin client, it will forward the storage information across, or if you have a printer connected, it will present a printer to the Windows machine. With these types of thin clients, something more than basic USB devices may not work correctly (e.g. MP3 players, iPods, etc.).

5) I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to with VI3, but if you're going to be putting people's workstations here, you probably want to have them available even when you have to do maintenance on one of the physical hosts, a server goes down, etc. The advantage of getting vCenter, along with features like vMotion and HA, is that you'll be able to dynamically manage load on your physical hosts, making sure that all users get good performance on their machines, you'll be able to migrate VMs to other physical hosts if you need to bring one of your physical machines down, and if (when) you lose a physical machine, your VMs will start back up elsewhere automatically.

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