HP's Thin Client, VDI, and Active Directory

[BSI-Miami]

Hello all,

I am relatively new to the world of VDI, but I understand a great deal of the technology and what it can offer. I have a question for the community I'm hoping someone can answer. I would like to find a "howto" article on reducing the footprint (ie: disk space, removing unnecessary programs, services) of an HP Thin Client - t5720 to be precise. Google isn't being very kind to me and HP Thin Client support is a joke (sorry HP, its true).

I'm hoping someone here has experience reducing the amount of used disk space on these clients down to the bare minimum.

Also, what kind of impact will Active Directory will have on these thin clients. In other words, will profiles eat up the amount of disk space when multiple users log into the thin client or will roaming profiles eliminate this.

I apologize in advance if these question seem very basic, however I just want to make sure I have a complete understanding of this emerging technology. Any help and/or advice is greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

-Leo

[davlloyd]

Easiest way to reduce the footprint of a HP thin client is to change it with a Wyse device. HP bought Neoware for a reason and I am would think it is not because they already had a great thin client offering.

[sgrinker]

Hahah... Dave, you said (well typed anyway) what I was thinking when I first read this post. Althought I definitely have to agree.

The HP device is running XPe, I believe. If that is the case you are only going to be able to "thin" down the footprint of the OS so much. You'll at least want to go with a Thin Client that is running some flavor of Linux, but the Wyse WNOS is going to definitely get you the smallest OS footprint.

However, if you already have the investment in the HP Thin Clients, I can understand that you'll want to make use of them. Unfortunately though, I'm not familiar with the management of their devices. I'd imagine they have some sort of snap-ins that you can add/remove if necessary? If that is the case, start going through there and removing anything you aren't using.

[BSI-Miami]

yes unfortunately we've already invested in the t5720 and are currently using them now (w/ citrix atm).

Can the Linux thin clients join our Windows domain? Should i even bother joining them to the domain? What about the RDP session? I'm not familiar at all with Linux thin clients.

[sgrinker]

Well to truly go "thin" Linux is your best bet. Thankfully with most flavors of Linux on Thin Clients, you don't need to be overly familiar to make use. Especially with WYSE and WTOS/WNOS (whichever you want to call their OS.)

To answer your question, no you cannot directly add the devices into your domain, but you really don't want to either. That's just one more device you have to administer. If you are using VMs on the backend, you essentially have created two Windows devices you need to administer. Granted there is still administration with a Linux based OS device, but it's MUCH easier. If you are looking at ways to keep track of the devices though, you'll want to look into the different management consoles from each vendor. They all have their pluses and minuses there as well, it just depends on what you want to do.

[hharold]

If you already invested in the HP Thin Clients, you probably want to strip down the Thin Client.

You could join the Thin Clients to your domain for maintenance and administering.

Strip down XPe (Could do this with GPO's, if joined to a domain), so the user only sees and gets a RDP Client session or a connection to your Connection Broker if you have one.

(look here: http://www.petri.co.il/forums/showthread.php?p=76718)

The user then logs on to its Virtual Desktop and only saves its profile and docs in the VDI-Machine (eg. where the Virtual Machine is running, on a SAN for instance), so you do not have to worry about diskspace on the Thin Client.

Hope this helps you on your way.

Regards,

Harold

[thinkthin]

I agree, using a Windows XP client to access Windows XP VDI is not the way to go. As an out suggestion you could use a PXE boot Linux distro like ThinStation or LTSP, these are free. Just set the T5720's to boot from LAN.

Links:

http://thinstation.sourceforge.net/

Wyse Thin OS for the record is a propritary Unix based OS but is not Linux,

Cheers,

-TT

[sgrinker]

thinkthin

Thanks for the clarification on Wyse Thin OS! I've always been under the impression it was Linux up until now. Oh yeah, and love your site by the way... thanks for putting all of that together (assuming you are the same "thinkthin".) I've found many a resource there. Just to give the site a plug if others aren't aware...

http://www.freewysemonkeys.com/site/index.php

Thanks again

Steve