Recommendations on a Thin Client rollout?
Hello! I'm the king of the nerds at a nonprofit, and I've been charged with rolling out a server upgrade to replace our old (so very old) hardware, but I'm not sure what to go with to replace our Thin Clients. Right now we're running about 70 Wyse S30 thin clients, which do nothing but facilitate a remote desktop connection to our Terminal Server.
Right now we're running Windows Server 2003 but we'll be moving to 2008 with this upgrade. User experience has suffered for years because of our overtaxed TS box and our relatively slow thin clients. With this upgrade we have the potential to replace the thin clients we have now, but I have no intention of doing anything more than using them to provide RDP to the Terminal Server(s).
What I don't know is how much impact a beefier thin client is going to have on the user experience. The Terminal Server is supporting ~40 concurrent users (Office/Email) on a 4GB, two dual-core Opteron 275 box which accounts for many slowdowns, but RDP responds so much faster on my work laptop, so its hard to gauge where most of the problem comes from.
As for my research so far, Wyse, HP and Dell all have TCs of varying expected usage at the $400 pricepoint, but that seems like a lot of money for what I need them to do and I'm wondering if I have any other options.
TL;DR: So my questions to you are: How much impact would replacing thin clients have over just replacing the Terminal Server they connect to? Further, what make/model thin client would best provide what I need without making our board of directors spin in their respective chairs?
Thank you in advance for any advice you have to share. I wasn't here for the initial rollout, but I'll try to provide feedback to help anybody come up with a recommendation. Also, I'll take the lumps for running 40 users on a single overloaded Terminal Server :P
EDIT: Spelling, processor clarification.
Posted Jan 25, 2011, 7:20 PM UTC · edited
Wyse C10LE. Price point around $250 and an excellent performer for a lower-end model.
For the performance issue your users are experiencing, are the connecting over the LAN or WAN?
Ah, yes. I considered this, but didn't know anybody with experience with it and neglected to put it in the post ("It's my first day!") It's a front runner if we have to replace ours then?
There are 60 Thin Clients in building, 10 at (separate) remote offices. Users experience general sluggishness (lock-ups, stuttering) in both locations. WAN connections also suffer latency issues, but that's the nature of the beast.
I would say so.
If you have the cash you can invest in an WAN optimization appliance, or maybe look down the Citrix road for the ICA compression and speed screen latency reduction.
You can greatly improve the performance when you upgrade to 2008 with RDS (make sure you upgrade to 2008 R2) if you add an additional 4 or 8 gig of ram as well.
Oh what fanciful dreams sprout when I think about what I could do if this were a properly-funded organization.
The performance gain from Server 2008 R2 is precisely the reason I'm pushing for it when we do the hardware refresh - the board and staff will be looking for marked improvements in experience for what we'll be paying for this and I want to deliver on that.
Thank you so much for your insight and time!