ThinClientIntroduction
An introduction to thin client computing
Thin client computing is around for a long time in the UNIX world. Although the implementation evolved quite a bit the concept the same:
- The clients only take care of the basic functions like display, keyboard, mouse and sound.
- The server does the heavy weightlifting, all the applications run on the server.
Because the clients have very little tasks to handle the hardware can be small and cheap. The clients itself are basicly maintaince free. They last longer because they have no moving parts like hardddisks. If they break no data is lost since nothing is stored on the client itself. Just swap the client with another one and go back to work. Clients get stolen or put at the trash? No data ends up on the streets.
The terminal server runs all applications and contains all the data. All the regular maintaince (software updates, administration) takes place at the server side. The server is more heavy then a normal PC but is much more efficient with resources like CPU, diskspace and memory (most capacity of normal PC's remains unused). Overall this results in the facts that thin client/terminal server environments are cheaper both hardware and maintainance wise.
A possible con of the thin client/terminal server model is that if the server fails all the thinclients which use it become unusable. In larger and high availability environments this is taken care of by fail-over mechanisms. For most situations it won't be a big issue since Edubuntu is really stable but it is something to keep in mind. Even without fail-over mechanisms its possible with good practices to get the environment back online rather quickly.