Thin Clients??

I have been trying to learn about Thin Clients but so far I'm struggling a bit, from what I can gather the Thin Clients connects via the network to a Terminal Services Server running in Application Mode where each user connects to there own 'virtual' desktop and the server provides all of the brains to do the processing.

My question is how do you license the Client Applications, for example if each user needed Office how can I allocate 10 license's to be used between 10 workstations??

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Originally Posted by D@ve

I have been trying to learn about Thin Clients but so far I'm struggling a bit, from what I can gather the Thin Clients connects via the network to a Terminal Services Server running in Application Mode where each user connects to there own 'virtual' desktop and the server provides all of the brains to do the processing.

My question is how do you license the Client Applications, for example if each user needed Office how can I allocate 10 license's to be used between 10 workstations??

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allocation of licenses is for concurrent uses. so say you have 10 thin client workstations but of those 10, they are divided in half between day and night shifts. so 5 people work during the day and 5 at night. you could get only 5 licenses of microsoft office, since there would only be a maximum of 5 people using it at one time.

this example is EXTREMELY simplified just to give you the general idea.

I've been playing with citrix meta frame recently for a project and it's pretty neat. has A LOT more options than just going the plain jane terminal services route with a windows server.

Thanks for the reply, Im still at the EXTREMELY simplified stage.

I must admit that I wasn't aware of Thin Clients working with Citrix, is it Citrix Meta frame presentation Server??

Is there a Linux alternative?

Terminal Services is like Citrix MetaFrame "light" - Citrix does everything that TermSvcs does and more.

I am trying to remember my training - but on Citrix (not sure of TermSvcs) you can limit the concurrent users of an application for licensing purposes - ie. 5 Office users / 8 CAD users / 2 photoshop users, etc...

You can also publish an application to a desktop that runs completely on Metaframe (no full desktop, just the application shortcut on the desktop.)

A Thin Client is a "Dumb Terminal" for the GUI world. Typically a Thin Client has a Internet Browser (Linux based) and Terminal Services (RDP) Client for connecting to Metaframe and TermSvcs from the terminal.

I have been looking into them to replace some of my machines as Thin Clients do not need to be upgraded as often (5+ years) due to them being a network card, keyboard, mouse and monitor - all the desktop processing takes place on the server. This also allows for MUCH better security - since it is all server based.

Without data being stored on the machine replacement in the event of hardware failure is a simple, sterile solution with no data loss - a big help in most any environment.