This doesn't sound new to me at all...
We were doing this at the NHS 2 years ago when I was there, and I remember working with places doing exactly this 10 years ago. In fact I think this may be somewhere that Gov IT is actually ahead of the trend.
If Jack Sprat ran an IT department
Moving to thin clients can save you capital and maintenance costs. It’s a brave IT manager that will do it all at once, though. Giving up PCs for smaller devices with simpler specifications represents a big change for administrators, and there may be kinks to work out. In any case, users don’t like disruption, so it’s best to …
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Tuesday 22nd March 2016 16:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
VDI on ESX + Citrix XenDesktop is very useful
Gives a centralised consistent build (faster to replace if broke), replicated across ESX servers for improved DR, & accessible from anywhere (with a network connection) with any PC. Also allows additional controls over data and improved monitoring of that estate.
Not cheap, but works very well.
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Tuesday 22nd March 2016 23:36 GMT dan1980
"Thin-fat"
Never heard that term before, though I've been working with it for ages.
This is, in my opinion, the best option most of the time. Thin clients are great - they are, generally, easy to deploy and pretty sturdy, light on power consumption and easy to tuck away.
But they are very cut-down devices and you lose all flexibility and ability to handle odd situations. A 'real' PC is far more useful and can be easily configured to work as a thin-client while still preserving the ability to utilise the extra functionality if required.
The problem with thin clients now is that they don't offer enough of a saving over the basic business PCs you can buy from, e.g. HP.
I have worked with a LOT of remote desktop/app/citrix/etc... environments and in nearly every environment there are a few users/roles that just require a normal PC. Once you have that, you have a heterogeneous environment and you lose some of the benefits of a uniform thin-computing model.
For example, many thin clients come with management and imaging software that won't be relevant (or extensible to) fat clients so you need another way to manage those. If you have all fat-clients (however they are used) then you can deploy a management solution that captures all of your devices and allows uniform monitoring and management.
There are other concerns, to be sure - like patching - but if you have even a handful of 'fat' clients then that's something you need to address anyway.
In the end, if thin clients represented a real dollar saving over PCs then they would be more attractive but there's just not a big enough saving to warrant the loss of flexibility.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
