Job for church \ school... vmware and thinclients

[WASH PC]

So I am looking for tips on this job we are bidding for a lutheran church \ school. there current system is old and we are replacing... they want a vmware server (esxi 4) and thin clients. they need at least 26 of them and they would like them all to run windows (7 preferred) and either ms office or open office (bidding both ways) anyone here have experience with something of this scale? i have worked with thin clients in the past but it was years ago and with another system (not vmware). any advice is appreciated.

 

[WASH PC]

forgot to mention the thin clients must be able to stream youtube videos and other flash based apps

 

[chrisaroz]

Well, the old math I used to use when selling these was 1 core and 2GB RAM per VM. So server wise, you'd need (4) 2 Processor Quad core 16GB RAM servers, or (2) 4 Proc 32GB servers (though that doesn't provide failover/redundancy). Dell just came out with some new thin clients, but I haven't researched them - any should work really. The licensing is what always confused me, so good luck with that - Windows license, Windows license for VM, Office, VMware.... I always got lost.

 

[weezon]

Running Windows 7 and VMware? What type of server are you going to use?

 

[cmonova]

I've used thinclients
But, I would check out these if I were you:
http://ncomputing.com/Default.aspx

 

[WASH PC]

windows 7 isnt a must, but a windows platform is. they want microsoft products to keep the students as familiar with their home computers as possible

 

[Blues]

Who will be using the thin clients and how much control do you want the users to have? You can go a few routes it just a question of the specifics your looking for where and what you want control over. These can impact your costs and performance.

 

[WASH PC]

students in grade 5 - 8 learning word, excel power point and other things. they will be watching videos on dissection and other sciencey stuff (youtube \ flash applications)

the instructor has a computer right in the middle and can see all the computers around, so they wont need to control them from there. they do have a computer teacher that wants to be able to have some control over what is done, but not enterprise level control. they wont need to lock them down or anything major. its going to be a pretty simple setup but multimedia is important to them

 

[Blues]

On the aspect of control even if your watching them if they click one thing and it loads a virus depending on setup every one just got infected and the system needs to go down to be fixed. So to not give too much control then I would look at going for a method where each time they log on it is instanced so no changes are made permanent. You could alternatively go with an enterprise level solution they would likely be about the same costs. I would suggest a Dual Processor Quad Core, I know not cheap, and 16GB or more of RAM with RAID5 HDD setup though for this scale Id consider staying on 7200 RPM drives but 10k or 15k might work better seeing as the amount of simultanous access.

 

[chrisaroz]

What about the new new windows multiple computer set-up we talked about a few weeks ago? For that number of systems, a couple of these may work:

http://www.technibble.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13956

 

[weezon]

What about the new new windows multiple computer set-up we talked about a few weeks ago? For that number of systems, a couple of these may work:

http://www.technibble.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13956

That's a real nice setup for a school.