A Q to the heavier enterprise IT dopers from us little guys. I just had a customer get pitched hard by a friend about the joy of thin clients for his new office install. I have zero experience in this type of installation and am having a hard time finding resources on what kind of server infrastructure is involved and the cost attached.
The current scenario is the customer needs 14 machines and a server. No problem, wrote him a bid.
The big question in my mind is at what point a thin client system is really cost beneficial over a more typical fat client/server install. I am under the impression that the server side setup would make this less cost effective until you start getting into much larger outfits but this is out of my skill set.
What type or business is it? Thin clients tend to be pretty unpopular with end users, especially professional ones so there better be a good reason to force them to use a less than full computer at work. You can do both with a Citrix setup. The end users have a regular computer that runs things like e-mail, the web, and applications like MS Office but business-critical applications run in a virtual window on the server itself. That tends to work pretty well and can be set up lots of different ways.
It is a dental office. My biggest concerns are heavy utilization of high draw USB devices (dental xray and oral camera systems) and if there is any significant difference in Server needs. I am mainly concerned with the costs associated with the software needs for a thin client install vs fat client. If there is a need for another server or another $5000 in software to make a thin client install work then he wont want it anyway (my preference since I have zero experience with it).
I am an IT professional but not the type you are but I have worked in IT departments for megacorps for many years and seen how it is done. I don’t like thin clients very much. They are a fad that keeps coming and going over the years. Most end users don’t like them either. Everywhere I have worked has used a cobbled together solution consisting of full-fledged PC’s with nightly backups to the servers and disk imaging for easy restores in case of a complete crash. Citrix can be used on top of that for running critical applications if needed but it isn’t always necessary. My personal opinion is to stay away from thin clients as a primary strategy. If you were an expert in it, it may make your job easier but the dental office still may be less than thrilled by it.
IME thin clients have their place. But that place is running a very restricted set of apps in locations which are relatively insecure. Like public-use terminals in a library or a hospital. Or a call centre. And forget running anything graphically intensive. For a dentists’ practice, it’s far too much hassle. PCs these days are so cheap that for your clients’ purposes they may as well not bother. As already noted, Citrix sessions to a TS can be used on top of fat clients.
A standardised fat client is far better in most circumstances.
I manage a few thin clients and have supported larger installations in the past. The price per client is still pretty high considering what a desktop goes for nowadays. Youre only saving between 100 or 200 per station, which isnt a lot considering the limitations and server overhead. With 14 computers you’ll probably be spending more on citrix and TS licenses than you are saving per workstation. I think gartner does reports on thin clients now and again.
Aside from that, Id be worried about USB devices. They may not like going through citrix or TS or whatever. Id also be worried about the mindset of small business owners. They think they know what they want, but they dont. If he’s demanding thin clients, you should at least educate him on their limitations.
Id also see if the dental software even runs in citrix and if the vendor supports it running on a citrix environment. Its not fun to troubleshoot software issues on citrix when the vendor tells you “We dont support that” or is rude to you because he thinks youre getting around buy licenses for his software. Software for small business is generally very shitty. Expect it to not like multi-user environments, want to write to c: emp, not use profiles properly, want to write to all sorts of places in the registry, etc.