In organizations we need a lot of computing power. Multiple users are using different computers for their work. In traditional computing the computer should be loaded with operating system and the applications that the user wants to use....
moreIn organizations we need a lot of computing power. Multiple users are using different computers for their work. In traditional computing the computer should be loaded with operating system and the applications that the user wants to use. This adds to the cost(Hardware and Software) and maintenance/management of the computers. Even the hardware will have wear and tear losses that will add to the annual maintenance cost and it require skilled persons also(administrators) to do this. An alternate method of this is to use a Thin-Client based architecture in the organization that receives a boot image over the network and displays a virtual desktop to the user. A thin client is just an interface between the user and the server. It does not require operating system or applications of its own. All the services will be taken from the central server. By implementing this the setup cost and the maintenance cost could be reduced to a great extent. There are multiple thin-client server architectures available. In this white paper we will discuss about an open source thin-client based computing architecture named as LTSP(Linux Thin-Client Server Project). It is a type of client that depends upon server for performing the computations. A thin-client is a machine that is connected to a central server over a computer network. The user session is created on server and transferred to the thin-client with the help of network protocols like RDP or TFTP. A thin-client does not have a hard drive of its own, all the user data is stored in the server only. It could be booted over the network by transferring boot image over the network from server. Thin-clients don't have any moving or mechanical parts, so the chances of failure are very low. The power consumption is also less as compared to fat clients/traditional computers. Hardware is also less. It reduces the total cost of ownership to the organization. The functionality of thin-clients will be less as compared to fat clients because it just provides an interface between the user and the server machine.
