[Ilugc] My thin client experience
Hi, Thanks to all the folks who gave useful feedback to help me find a suitable thin client for my business' needs. I just finished taking iTalc on a test drive. iTalc is quite literally a beautiful educational tool. I wanted to use the power of computers to visually explain concepts but yet didn't want to put up an economically and energy-wise expensive projector or a fancy large screen TV. iTalc filled that very need by providing a means to control and transmit to the desktops of the LTSP clients. My needs were: 1. GNU/Linux friendly thin clients that work in an LTSP environment. 2. Low on power consumption: saves power bill, saves cooling needs, cut down need for a big UPS. 3. Low on desktop foot print: Thin, Small, Simplicity is what I was looking for. Simply because I don't have a very large space. 4. Self Maintainable (ie,. no horribly-designed-products-with-3-year-warranty). 5. Gigabit - just so I can be happy to know the network is not my bottleneck. What I reviewed: 1. Ncomputing: Bound to their proprietary software - sucks to be forced to use non-LTSP. But Ncomputing was way cheaper and it did "lure" me since they are known to "support Linux". 2. Userful: Super simple, Beautiful, Works with most - but I got skeptical and leaned away. 3. Panache: Awesome line up of products though, most cost effective thin clients are proprietary. No way to get a look and feel - gotta order and be happy with whatever I find. I didn't like this very aspect. The good part about panache was its openness in letting folks purchase their cabinets alone. But their cabinets are about 2 times more expensive than the cheapest vanilla Rs.900/- cabinet. 4. Used PC: I tried. I gave up because I didn't want to be living with a nightmarish infrastructure made up of a diverse mix of PCs of all sizes, ages and makes. Plus, most of them came with stuff I didn't want - like hard drives or an AGP. But all disadvantages aside, this seemed to me to be the most cost effective route- I could have gotten a box-monitor based setup for Rs.5000/- but that saving will swell other running costs. 5. DIY thin client: I so wanted to do it. but I wasn't sure I was going to find the time. Little did I know, though, that this route will consume 3 man days in finding the truth behind excellent sounding sales promises by just about every vendor on Ritchie St. The review: IMO: All the factory made products didn't score on the price and the maintainability front, except Zotac's ID-series. But its availability in India was a problem. Used PCs weighed low on all my needs except that of self maintainability and low cost. DIY seemed like the only choice left to be explored... and this exploration is more than just calling up people ;) So I was left with the bar on power consumption and foot print. The only way forward was to come up with the configuration and shop for suitable cabinets that are small and available in the market for closer inspection. This is what I ended up with after arriving at Chennai and loitering around Ritchie St for 3 days. Thin client configuration: - Intel D425KT - 2G DDR3 - 15.6" LED TV - Zebronics Genesis "slim" cabinet - KB+Mouse The cost of this setup turned out to be about Rs.9,100/- though if one wasn't as specific about desktop space usage or energy usage, a setup as cheap as Rs.6,000/- could have been achieved using old CRTs instead of the LED that sank 3.3K. The server and its karma: The LTSP server used to be a Home Audio Studio DAW in its previous birth. I chose this because this was the best box I had on hand. I chose edubuntu 11.04 because LTSP worked out of the box (My erstwhile studio sports an i5 Quad core with a DH57DD motherboard. I upgraded this rig to add 8G more RAM and bought two new 500G SATA 2 drives for RAID). I also test drove the power of the jack audio framework and realized it is possible to use LTSP to _do_ stuff like what real studios do (one person doing the drums, one singing, another doing the bass, another playing a real instrument and one mixing it all together live. One Helluva Free Software Orchestra it can be. Who wants to jam? ;) Cheers, -Suraj -- Career Gear - Industry Driven Talent Factory http://careergear.in/ ___ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] My thin client experience
Greetings, On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 1:42 AM, Suraj Kumar wrote: > Quad core with a DH57DD motherboard. I upgraded this rig to add 8G more RAM > and bought two new 500G SATA 2 drives for RAID). Thanks for a wonderful review. Just hope you are running a 64 bit version on the server otherwise your other 4 GB RAM would go waste. Wondering how many Thin clients are going to access this server. I have run a Fedora 3 HA and then Centos 5- 3 node cluster (with fencing, of course) with LVS front-end for load balancing with DRBD and NFS with about 150 thin clients (wy back in 2007). Perhaps I can give you some input. -- Regards, Rajagopal ___ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] My thin client experience
thanks for the wonderful sharing. It was very informational. regarding Italc im curious about the tool. If possible can you elaborate the advantages of this open source tool thanks VJ On 12/30/11, Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote: > Greetings, > > On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 1:42 AM, Suraj Kumar wrote: >> Quad core with a DH57DD motherboard. I upgraded this rig to add 8G more >> RAM >> and bought two new 500G SATA 2 drives for RAID). > > Thanks for a wonderful review. > > Just hope you are running a 64 bit version on the server otherwise > your other 4 GB RAM would go waste. Wondering how many Thin clients > are going to access this server. > > I have run a Fedora 3 HA and then Centos 5- 3 node cluster (with > fencing, of course) with LVS front-end for load balancing with DRBD > and NFS with about 150 thin clients (wy back in 2007). > > Perhaps I can give you some input. > > -- > Regards, > > Rajagopal > ___ > ILUGC Mailing List: > http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc > -- Thanks VJRGVN ___ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] My thin client experience
On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Rajagopal Swaminathan < raju.rajs...@gmail.com> wrote: > Just hope you are running a 64 bit version on the server otherwise > your other 4 GB RAM would go waste. Wondering how many Thin clients > are going to access this server. > Of course, I'm running a 64-bit PAE. I have run a Fedora 3 HA and then Centos 5- 3 node cluster (with > fencing, of course) with LVS front-end for load balancing with DRBD > and NFS with about 150 thin clients (wy back in 2007). > > Perhaps I can give you some input. > Interesting. Would like to hear the end goal / motivation behind a thin-client setup and what bottle necks / challenges you faced. I only have 15 nodes to begin with. Way less than 150 :) regards, -Suraj -- Career Gear - Industry Driven Talent Factory http://careergear.in/ ___ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] My thin client experience
On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 1:48 PM, vijayaraghavan seshan < msvraghavan2...@gmail.com> wrote: > > regarding Italc im curious about the tool. If possible can you > elaborate the advantages of this open source tool > http://italc.sf.net/ <-- and if this isn't enough info, you can try it yourself by downloading edubuntu 11.04 ISO. Start the 'server' by booting off the ISO and for a demo thin client, connect another computer to the network and make it boot over the network and watch the magic. regards, -Suraj -- Career Gear - Industry Driven Talent Factory http://careergear.in/ ___ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] My thin client experience
On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Suraj Kumar wrote: > Of course, I'm running a 64-bit PAE. PAE is for 32 bit systems. If you are using a PAE kernel then your kernel is still 32 bit but it can handle more than 4GB RAM. - Raja ___ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] My thin client experience
On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 10:47 PM, Raja Subramanian wrote: > On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Suraj Kumar wrote: > > Of course, I'm running a 64-bit PAE. > > PAE is for 32 bit systems. If you are using a PAE kernel then > your kernel is still 32 bit but it can handle more than 4GB RAM. > Sorry, I meant to only say 32-bit PAE but the questioner biased me ;) regards, -Suraj -- Career Gear - Industry Driven Talent Factory http://careergear.in/ ___ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] My thin client experience
On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 5:17 AM, Suraj Kumar wrote: > On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 10:47 PM, Raja Subramanian > wrote: > >> On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Suraj Kumar wrote: >> > Of course, I'm running a 64-bit PAE. >> >> PAE is for 32 bit systems. If you are using a PAE kernel then >> your kernel is still 32 bit but it can handle more than 4GB RAM. >> > > Sorry, I meant to only say 32-bit PAE but the questioner biased me ;) When I read it, I thought it a was a New Year joke :) PS - thanks for sharing your experience. Very few people follow up after solving their query. -- Arun Khan ___ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc