Thin Clients @ Home

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

So for a while, I've been toying with the idea of running a server round the clock at home. One thing has put me off, and that's the cost of electricity.

A 100W server is just under £10/month when ran 24/7...

However, if I could throw out the two PCs which are used in the home (yeah, only two!!), each consuming 100W~ without monitors... I think I could justify running a server.

So, how does one go about this?

From what I gather, a thin client (the company 'Wyse' keeps popping up) basically just RDPs onto a Terminal Server, is there much more to it than this? Is there anything I should be aware of?

On this 'super-server', I'm planning on running Hyper-V and a stack of Microsoft OSs. If I can achieve this only using Microsoft software (on the server side anyway), I'll be very happy

Thanks in advance for your helpful tips ;)

EDIT: Just re-read this, and realised it looks as though I'm asking for step-by-step instructions, I just need pointing in the right direction!

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Yes, the thin clients would basically run a terminal server session to the server, with its pros and cons.

Good progress has however been made in creating an almost seamless experience between running an RDP session versus a dedicated machine. Typically one would expect to experience some latency between input and seeing something take place on-screen with a terminal session, but you'll probably be running it all on a fast local network at home, so that's a pretty moot point. High-def video or playing a game requiring 3D hardware acceleration may also need to be removed from the equation, but with Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, you can use RemoteFX to help close the gap, and you can even setup the server OS to look like a Windows 7 machine and retain the fun of Hyper-V for virtualization of servers.

Have fun

 

I'm running two computers, one server and one client. I've got 2 XP, one Vista running on W7 machine and my other machine is a server which is on 24/7. I've not seen any significant increase in my leccy bill from running one box permanently with one as and when required compared to two boxes as and when required. If the server is doing piss all except just being there the power consumption is significantly lower than your calculations suggest I think.
I only set these up 2 months ago so I'm not comparing apples to oranges on the power cost either.

 

Sounds interesting. If all Thin Clients do is establish an RDP session, why do they seem to vary so much? I'm still not quite sure why some run Windows CE?

I'm totally new to this area of technology, and have only ever dealt with fat clients before...

 

Thin clients can do alot more than just RDP connections, they can do vmware view, citrix ica and all sorts. Thin clients typically run either something like xp embedded, a custom version of linux or a proprietry os from the maufacturer (like wyse OS, i suspect that it is heavily nix based). The hardware specs can vary althought even the lowest TC will be able to handle RDP connections without any issues.

Personally I like the Wyse os alot myself, At the last place I set up an entire infrastructure based on them and when they booted they pulled all their config info from a ftp site advertisied in DHCP, so one text file controlled everything. lovely stuff.

 

I ran my wife's machine over Citrix for a while - more trouble than its worth, imo. Just bring up a domain at home and use that. There's no need to bother with thin clients - you won't save any money on the electric bill as they'll still need powering, and will need monitors.