Re: [linuxiran] Implementing Thin Clients

[Aryan Ameri]

Hi: 
I love it when people give me this much info. Thanks Arash, as always.

OK, very informative email. I crave to setup lab like the one in your 
university, however, I can't. I have been to a couple of faculties 
here, CS, IT, and EE, and well, from what I have seen, it's mostly just 
standalone PCs. There is one lab, dedicated to client-server computing, 
and I haven't been there and I don't know what they are using. And I 
haven't also been to the math department. However, other labs just use 
standalone whitebox PCs. a very unsatisfactory soloution, as you can 
imagine. 

I am talking about labs here, which students; normal students use in 
order to perform their everyday tasks. I'm talking about web browsing, 
email, office, and so on. 

I am aware or the limitation of x86 architechture, however, guess what? 
it's cheap. Sun is great, I have always loved sun, but their cheap low 
end servers are very slow these days, so slow that a p4 whill toast in. 
And their high end systems, although great, and technically superior 
than anything in the market, are very expensive.

My department wanted to buy 100 standalon PCs, to add to the current 
laboratories in the IT department. We have about 5000 of these PCs in 
the university, so replacing all of them is not even imaginable. The 
quesiton is not changing the whole structure, and switching to SunRays, 
the question is, should the faculty buy these 100 PCs? Or am I able to 
demonstrate that client-server comunting is a better soloution, so that 
maybe in the future, eventualy, the university gradualy switches to 
this kind of computing. I can't change the whole structure right now. 

So, I have a very limited budget, to setup a sample lab. A small lab, 
just to show dumb terminals, and how they can be adminstered and these 
things. And as much as as I hate x86, I think for me it's the only 
soloution, because it's cheap, very cheap. You don't suggest going 
upper than 4 way, however I have heard of success stories, and Dell and 
others are shipping x86 based 4 CPU Xeon systems. So I feel safe with a 
4 way system. Xeon can (with a hack) handle more than 4 GB of RAM, but 
I think I should go with Athlon or P4, so 4 GB is my maximum. Also, for 
20 clients, I think 20 GB SCSI HDD, or at most a 35 GB one, would be 
enough. Each user shouldn't store more than 1 GB.

I know, SunRays are cool, and I have heard of critix and am familiar 
with it's technology, but this is not what I want. I want it to be very 
cheap. very very cheap. I want to assemble the clients, and the server 
myself. (that would be the cheapest one), 

But, what I should I have in a thin client? I would be delighted if you 
give me the specifications of your xterminals. what kind of a power 
supply? do I need a video card? what about a small (say pentium 90 Mhz 
processor, in than case it would become smart client rather than dumb 
client). I don't need a sound card, speaker, or CD ROM, these I know. 
And I know I need a ethernet card with bootp. but bot much more.

How should I connect the terminals to the server? is it a simple 
ethernet LAN? Do I need a switch, or would a hub be enough?

And for software, I really would like to go the open source route, if 
nothing, just for price. LTSP seems promising, I have to check it in 
detail. 


Your information regarding the setup in your university was very 
interesting, However that's not what I am looking at. I can't dictate 
to my university, what computer to buy, and from which manufacturer. 
But I can build my own, and show them the advantages of this model. 
That's what I want to do.

Any info, on how actualy I can build these xterminals, is welcome. Also 
I would like to see if anyone has ever used a x86 system with 4 CPU and 
linux on it, in a real way. I want to be asured, that performance wise, 
such a server is able to service 20 clients.


Greetings

On Wednesday 29 October 2003 05:48, Arash Partow wrote:
> Hi Aryan,
>
>
> At my uni about 95% of the workstations (which is about 3000 ws's)
> are xterminals. Basically dumb terminals that have nothing other than
> a n/w bootloader, ethernet-card, small amount of ram (about 16mb),  a
> bus that runs through all the other devices in the system, a very
> large 21" flat screen monitor an SGI kbd and mouse, simple true-color
> graphics interface for running the monitor, 1 small-n-simple PC
> speaker and 1 tiny power adaptor the size of a matchbox, no cpu, no
> PCI slots, no power or ide or scsi cables, no controllers, no huge
> heatsinks or noisy fans. the whole box is about the size of a video
> cassette and can be strapped to the underpart of the desk it will be
> placed on, they need no interaction from the user, they are always
> on. They are in my opinion the perfect solution to mass computing.
>
>
> The servers that service them are Sun stations, each of which have 64
> 128- bit UltraSparcs, with I think 6.4Gb RAM and 2 TB of HDD each, I
> have not once ever seen any of the xterm labs go down, each xterm is
> directly connected to the servers via gigabit switches, and you're
> capable of getting a variety of different OSs due to Citrix
> meta-frames. At the moment the server can provide:
>
>  1. Solaris 9.0
>  2. OpenBSD
>  3. FreeBSD
>  4. RH Enterprise 9.0
>  5. Windows 2k Prof
>  6. DOS 5.0
>
> However a setup like this costs A LOT of money and this setup is only
> available in the CS, SE, EE departments at my uni, the library
> systems run a similar system to that of yours but under NT and well
> I've never ventured into other departments except for the chemistry
> and math departments and they seem to be using win2k. But I think the
> win2k licenses came from microsoft at a very cheap price, so cheap in
> fact that they were paying the uni to provide win2k to the students.
> every student regardless of what department they are in has the right
> to obtain 1win2k prof 1 winxp prof 1 visual studio enterprise 1
> winserver2003, 1 office xp prof license for free and do with it as
> they please. I sold mine for a neat little profit of $2800AUD :)
>
>
> The majority of the costs as I see it come from maintaining the
> system. a whole technical services department is dedicated to running
> just the CS side of the system, I think it is comprised of 15
> full-time professional sys- admins and about 40 part-time students.
> Also citrix meta-frames licensing is another cost, but I think its
> worth it, cause there isn't an open-source equivalent to it.
>
> an advantage to such a system is heat, in the labs that have PCs, it
> can get really hot even if the air-conditioning is turned on
> especially around assignment deadlines etc. however in the xterm labs
> its always cool and serene.
>
> another advantage is if people are doing Client-Server subjects, they
> can easily build and test their code or scripts on such an
> architecture without having to get permission to install stuff on
> different parts of the OS, cause the only OS you can modify is your
> own one, so if you stuff up you wont be modifying anyone else's view
> of the OS. Its works like VM in a way, the system takes a snapshot of
> your whole system state when you log-out and brings it back up when
> you log in, if of course you stuff up your setup, you can get a clean
> setup and replace lost work via the snapshots system.
>
> another advantage is that you don't have to be at uni to use the
> system you can log-on at home via ssh and use either console terminal
> mode or if you have X installed and a really fast internet connection
> you can go into graphical mode in any case you get the same result
> and you don't even have to be on a unix system you can be using
> windows and use something like vnc to get a meta-frame of your
> desired OS.
>
>
> The only major disadvantage I saw was that some subjects like AI that
> have assignments that require doing things like A* searches of a
> search space, or people doing 3D graphics really put a huge load on
> the system. Last year the IT departments made 1 room of PCs running
> RH 8.something totally dedicated for 3d graphics and cluster
> computing, subsequently they removed the ogl and mpi headers and
> runtimes from gcc on the major system, and also limited the number of
> processes you can have running to 60.  which since then has lifted a
> great load off the major servers, because before 3D rendering for
> things like opengl or MPI overheads were handled by the servers, now
> its being done by the GForce4s and the Dual P4s found in the PCs
> themselves.
>
> However you still have people running GAs and other AI related stuff
> and you always get 1st years that are doing CS theory running example
> code of TSPs and such, seeing if they are really factorially complex.
> I'm guilty of such things also, or was would be right, but the system
> has policies for CPU time and such, and the more the sys-admins
> refine these policies the better the system gets.
>
> There is another disadvantage and that is mainly related to
> assignments where things are time-critical (distributed servers are
> not real-time OSs), like a DB and File structures assignment I had a
> few years back, we were asked to build a large file (1Gb) of records
> and access them in a sequential and also random fashion to
> demonstrate the caching properties of the OS, however when you have
> many people doing the same assignment such as this, you get issues
> where no caching is being done at all because the system can't decide
> what to cache and what not to cache. each file was different and the
> OS has only a finite amount of memory. And the assignment had to be
> done on the particular Sun systems cause they had nano-second
> resolution timing and also to keep the results of everyone
> consistent. I would see different results of my trials when I ran
> them during the day and when I ran them in the mornings at about 3am
> (which was most likely due to user load).
>
>
>
> IMHO no one really needs a PC. What I mean is that the typical legacy
> architecture of CPU,RAM,HDD etc... all you need are ways of inputting
> data, kbd, mouse, CD-Drive (which btw we don't have CD-Ds on the
> xterms at uni however a newer version of the xterms called SunRays
> have DVD-CD players, but if we need info that's on a CD to get onto
> our accounts there are labs that have PCs with CDs that have access
> to the major system), and ways of getting output, monitor, soundcard
> and printer. And as far as uni's go, all you need are kbd, mice,
> monitors and printers. subjects that require sound cards and high-end
> graphics should have their own separate labs, that have dedicated PCs
> but still have a log-in scheme which is equivalent to that of the
> major system. this kind of setup is not possible under windows, so a
> unix-linux combination is what you need.
>
>
> But again it comes back to money, and you need lots of it, and you
> need it up front, however now I think now would be a good time to
> invest in such systems cause sun has heavily reduced its prices on
> enterprise systems. On the other hand looking at the specs you've
> given for your labs it doesn't seem like your uni is really
> interested in upgrading technology.
>
>
> Now coming to x86, mmmmm... as servers this architecture has a lot to
> be desired from. Even in clustered environments their over-heads are
> huge. and in any case other than specially built mobos your not gonna
> find mobos that can handle anything more than dual cpus. Also they
> don't employ vectoring in their processing buses, and rather rely
> heavily on interrupt driven events, which when you think of servers
> that's a lot of over-head. x86 type servers will always be cheaper
> than Crays(not made anymore :() and SunStations, and probably cost
> less to admin them cause there are more people certified for x86
> platform than there are for US platforms.
>
> Well I've given you the layout at my uni. It services a max load of
> about 3500 students, with different OSs and different services. As
> indicated before you gotta know up front what the system is going to
> be used for what kind of assignments will students be doing on them,
> will they be using packages like Matlab, mathematica these are the
> really important things, and I don't think you will be able to answer
> these questions by yourself, only the people teaching the courses
> will be able to answer these things, also remember a uni computer
> system is just that, its a system to provide computational services
> for uni efforts and nothing else, well at least that's what the
> finance department of the uni would like to hear when they eventually
> sign over money. they don't want to hear that it can also be used for
> things other than uni work for which they can't derive a profit.
>
> Also a very sinister aspect of large computer setups, I haven't seen
> this at my uni, but at another the IT technical group intentionally
> advocated setting up Windows98 and WindowsME in lieu of more stable
> systems such as linux or even win2k so that they could guarantee
> their employment. be careful of this fact, because you may think you
> are helping people but you could also be making enemies in the
> process.
>
>
> Anywayz if you want more specific info on performance and prices
> e-mail me and I'll talk to the sys-admins.
>
>
> Regards
>
>
> Arash
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Be one who knows what they don't know,
> Instead of being one who knows not what they don't know,
> Thinking they know everything about all things.
> http://www.partow.net
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Aryan Ameri" <address@hidden>
> To: <address@hidden>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 10:43 AM
> Subject: [linuxiran] Implementing Thin Clients
>
> > Hi there:
> >
> > I am here to ask for help, advice, or anything you can give me.
> > Here in the University, Winodws rules the desktop. It's not that I
> > do not like windows, in fact I am happy with any soloution that
> > works(TM). But the problem is, the current soloution that is
> > deployed in our computer labs, doesn't work. I want to change it.
> >
> > Basicaly, here in computer labs, all the computers are white box
> > PCs. With a Pentium or Pentium II procesor, 64 MB of RAM, and a
> > windows 98 installed on top of it. Any user can come and sit, and
> > then have total complete access to the device. As you know windows
> > 98 lacks any kind of adminstration capabilities, so any use here
> > has access to nearly do anything with the computer. Every single
> > student who enters the lab, can do what ever he/she wants with the
> > computer. Install software, remove software, curropt the OS, delete
> > the partition, ... The result is quite imaginable. At any given
> > moment, 30% of the computers do not work, and the adminstarators
> > have a really hard time, fixing these computers, only to find that
> > another one is now broken.
> >
> > It amazes me that untill now, no one had thought of a better
> > soloution. It seems everybody took this situation for granted,
> > thinking that it's the only way of doing things. Not me, I want to
> > change this whole mess.
> >
> > Upgrading to Windows 2k or XP is of course a soloution, but a
> > costly one. All the hardware here should be upgraded, as well as
> > buying new license of the OS, which has a pretty steep price. while
> > Microsoft gives educational discounts, still the price is pretty
> > high, and our faculty doesn't have the resources to undergo such a
> > drastic upgrade. Besides, I don't want to just replace 98 with XP,
> > I want a real change. I want thin clients.
> >
> >
> > I have long believed in the thin client-server model. Considering
> > that nearly 99% of the students here in the lab use the computer
> > for web surfing, email, office, and other simple things. I don't
> > underestand why every user should have a dedicated processor, video
> > card, Hard Disk, and so on. Thin clients, should provide more than
> > enough for web surfing and emailing.
> >
> > Thin Clients are  well, thin. They require less space, this means
> > that you can put more of them into the same space, than desktop
> > PCs. therefore, in a computer lab, with limites space, more people
> > woule be able to use computers.
> >
> > Thin clients use less power energy. Some research suggest that they
> > use nearly 1/6 of the electricity power that a normal desktop PC
> > uses. Electricity is expensive here, if we can cut our electricity
> > cunsomtion by 1/6, it will be a major win.
> >
> > Thin clients are easy to adminster. You don't have to adminster
> > every single box. Just maintain the central server, and everything
> > would be fine. This means a great reduce in the adminstration job.
> >
> > Besides, they are cheap. Cheaper than desktop PCs. The client
> > doesn't need a video card (do they?), hard disk, etc.
> >
> > Users will only have access to what they should have. So they can't
> > break a system.
> >
> > And also many many other advantages which you guys all know.
> > Besides, I also eye the opportunity of suddenly representing Linux
> > desktop to the faculty and replace windows desktops with linux, who
> > knows, they might like it and stay to it (Linux is free you know
> > :-), they like it here!! ).
> >
> > I have talked with the head of the faculty, and he told me to
> > prototype my ideas, and write a draft on thin clients, and explain
> > in exactly what I want to do, and how I plan to acomplish it. If I
> > can convince him, he is willing to give me a budget, and let me
> > lead a pilot project in using thin clients in computer labs. The
> > problem is, when it comes to implementation, my knowledge is near
> > zero.
> >
> > How should I build thin clients? Can I build them myself just like
> > white box PCs? Or should I buy them from manufacturers? (the second
> > case would add to costs).
> >
> > What kind of a server do I need? Let's say for servicing 20
> > clients, how much powerful should my server be? Do you think a
> > 4-way CPU, with say 4 GB RAM (mazimum available on the x86
> > architecture) is enough for a 20 client lab? What about disk
> > storage?
> >
> > What software should I run, should I run the X server, host the
> > server on the lab server, and then connect the cleints to it? Or
> > are there any other special soloutions for using thin client (X
> > sounds fine for *nix systems, but if we are to use windows, then
> > what?) Note that I don't want to pay for software, so I would
> > rather have a full open source soloution.
> >
> > Or any other white papers, advice, practical experience, or
> > anything regarding thin clients is greatly welcomed. Also if you
> > point me to a white paper, analysis, or a research which explains
> > the advantages of thin client, it would help me in writing my
> > prototype.
> >
> > Arash Bijanzadeh and Zeini: I know that Cahapar Shabdiz works
> > closely with that swedish company which is experienced in thin
> > clients. I would love it if you guys give me any information that
> > you have, regarding thin clients. Have you ever deploied it
> > yourself in a
> > production-level ? What about performance and speed? is performance
> > reliable enough to perform these simple day-to-day tasks? Also if
> > you give me information about that swedish company, I might use it.
> > Who knows, we might end-up buying our systems from them. If they
> > have good prices, and give educational discounts :-)
> >
> > Basicaly, any information regarding thin clients is welcome. Let me
> > save my university!!!
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > --
> > /*  "Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
> > every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a
> > theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those
> >  who are cold and are not clothed."*/
> > --President Eisenhower
> >
> > Aryan Ameri
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > bna-linuxiran mailing list
> > address@hidden
> > http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bna-linuxiran
>
> _______________________________________________
> bna-linuxiran mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bna-linuxiran

-- 
/*  "Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a
theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those
 who are cold and are not clothed."*/
                --President Eisenhower

Aryan Ameri