Strategy to virtualize 50-100 thin clients

[biokovo]

We want to virtualize about 50-100 thin clients in our Windows domain enviroment.

There will be 2 Blade servers for redundancy and DRS, each with 2xQuadCore E5440 and 48GB RAM. Storage is FC.

I need advice from everyone with experience with this. The questions are:

- how many thin clients we can have on that 2 servers if clients use standard office and internet applications (about 400-700 MB memory);

- we have no experience with HP ThinConnect box. Why these boxes have CPU and memory (512 MB or more)? We need some low-cost box. Any advice?

- what is approximately the price per thin client regarding physical computer? As I can see it is more expensive?!

Thanks on any advice.

[MicahelMenne]

What will be your VM guest operating system? What will it's configration be (RAM, Video RAM, CPUs, OS, 32-bit, 64-bit ... etc..).

Off the top of my head I think you'll be hard pressed to get 50-100 clients on a single blade. If you want redundancy, that's what you are planning for if you have two blades.

What protocol will you be using PCoIP or RDP? What Internet Applications? Any Flash video content? Any other MultiMedia content?

Thin clients by themselves are cheaper than PCs, but that isn't the whole story. VDI per desktop cost more from a CapEx perspective. I work for a university and we're getting some pretty good discounts and the best we're going to do on CapEx is break even against a physical desktop.

I'm just starting down this road myself and don't have many answers for you as we're still doing Proof of Concept. RAM will be you biggest limiting factor. Memory overcommittment will help on that. At 1.5GB per desktop, we're figuring on about 30 desktops per host wih 48GB RAM. This may be conservative.

[AndreTheGiant]

how many thin clients we can have on that 2 servers if clients use standard office and internet applications (about 400-700 MB memory);

Probably near 50 VMs / host.

Memory is not a big problem to reach this number, but CPU usage of the VMs could be a problem.

For each core you can consider 4-6 running running VMs.

we have no experience with HP ThinConnect box. Why these boxes have CPU and memory (512 MB or more)? We need some low-cost box. Any advice?

View Client require some feature on "user" side.

To use PCoIP, multimedia accelaration or USB redirection, for example, you need a good client.

If you do not need this feature, you can use also a "dummy" linux client with the open source implementation of View Client

what is approximately the price per thin client regarding physical computer? As I can see it is more expensive?!

In some cases is near a PC.

But remember that you must also add the Windows Client license on the datacenter side!

Andre

[biokovo]

Thanks.

What you mean "Windows Client license": OS licence, or some additional windows thin client licencing?

[biokovo]

Thanks.

It will be 32-bit XP or Wndows 7, without graphic application.

Protocol is PCoIP, there will be flash and multimedia over internet, but this is not primary bussiness.

Memory per desktop is about 700MB, not 1.5GB.

[AndreTheGiant]

The VM on the datacenter must have a valid license.

VECD is usually the solution for virtual desktop.

Andre