This post begins with the financial considerations around building thin client workstations.
To work this out, I needed a plan (nice thought). I would construct a small lab with two stations and two servers. One server would be Windows 2003 and the other would be CentOS4 (Linux) but both had to be the same model. On the workstation side, I wanted two fully depreciated computers of different vintages. This approach allowed me to test the widest variety of choices while being fair on the server side.
Here are my four computers:
- Dell GX400 - 500M RAM - Windows 2003
- Dell GX400 - 500M RAM - CentOS4
- Dell GX 620 - 256M RAM - No Disk, No Operating System
- Dell GX 1 - 256M RAM - No Disk, No Operating System
Now that I think of it, I should have taken the time to name them
I wanted to support workstations with a full suite of applications and a choice for the users, Linux or Windows. For the Linux users, the selection was KDE and for the Windows users … well … Windows. For an office applications, the Penguins get OpenOffice and Traditionalists get Microsoft Office. The workstations need to support the sound cards too, because I want to support call center applications. I will address applications for the call center in a later post in this series.
In the server side, the CentOS box would run Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) 4.2 and on Window, Remote Desktop functionality.
The costs for this approach are minimal (well actually nothing) for the Linux software and standard pricing for the Microsoft components. Later in the series I will address maintenance and operational costs.
My next section in the series will get to the issue of making the computers work together. I have four computers, requirements and desire but nothing concrete yet.
0 Responses to “What was old may actually be new - Part II”