A client bought a certain brand pc around 3 to 4 years ago, they came with a decent 22" wide screen and vista business. Paired up with a full sized rack with a ups and 2 good hp proliant g380 or what ever, only problem is every single one of the client PCs since installation has had to go back for RMA repair and reimage reinstall etc. In otherwords the client pc motherboards had some kind of issue which caused every single one of them to have to be repaired. Of course you can imagin what the client had to say bout it. The client is going to be spending money and asked about a certain all in one system, but they are going to be guided towards HP desktops, maybe reusing the screens. In any case I have said, why not install those net boxes, each desk does not need a dvd player, dvd burner, unnecessary +200gb of disk space, overhead of os repair, maintance, updates, app roll outs, To be honest I read about some form of netbox about 2 years ago and that it was the next big thing and my work collegue from today (over time screen roll out project) said he supported them and they are good. Way I see it, the PC count is going to be around 15 to 16, times that by £400, £500, 2 days install, ongoing support, how about some other smarter more tidy option to both save the client some money and improve remote support? What is the best net box option today and does it hang off a citrix technology. What I was plaining to do was try to push this and possible arrange a phone call with some kind of rep for these products.. The customer got a bad deal last time Id like to put forward the best solution, if that is a all in one so be it but id like to hear some other sugggestions. Or I could just keep my mouth shut and worry about my own issues Any feedback? Cheers rb
Either Dx series HP's with a 3 year carepack on them or install a terminal server & thin clients. Neither would be cheap.
Do you think it makes sense to consider thin client netbox solutions with user count of 15, budget of £6/£7.5k Maybe I should keep my ideas out of it, the users I expect would perfer to have multimedia capable non 1984 logging type enviroment, currently there is zero admin on internet access or system use, all users have full admin rights. They are based in a church, nice team of people I have gone there for a few years now. What do you think, my mate today said they are called "nice" netboxes but I cant see any thing about them.
the server power needed to run the amount of boxes your thinking would suck up your budget. What's wrong with what they have now?
I'd go with a terminal server and thin clients. Thin clients are relatively cheap so most of your costs would be server hardware (which will determine whole system performance). I'm guessing your clients are using normal, non-resource-hungry applications like Office, email and internet. A decent server for 15 such Remote Desktop environments at once wouldn't be very expensive. Four to eight cores and maybe 16GB of RAM should handle it. For multimedia purposes remember that such things as graphics are locally rendered so the thin-client hardware becomes the limiting factor. An alternative (often used when deploying terminal services on existing hardware) is 'thick-clients', which are essentially normal desktops acting as terminals.
You can run a lot of office users off a quad core DL180 with 4GB RAM, I've had 30 people on one before quite happily. All that on a £1000 server. Netboxes like the one I think you're thinking of require ongoing subscriptions for office etc & a recent review put them as quite rubbish for a user experience. Hanging 15 of them off an adsl line would make for a very poor user experience. Does the budget include VAT? What does the client actually need from the upgrade? Are they a registered charity? What do the servers do at the moment (AD etc)
