Mainframe and terminal setup for the home

[Fatt]

I was just sort of daydreaming about this and I wonder if it would be practical...

Suppose I wanted to run a nice powerful main server with all the software and filesystems and then have dumb terminals in various rooms for the use of different household members.

How practical would this be and what's involved?

I'd know how to set up a home network. Hell, I already did.

I just don't have any experience with mainframe/terminals.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Do you want a mainframe or just thin clients? I doubt you really want a mainframe (if you have the money for it throw some my way ). Ive thought about setting up some thin clients around my house for various things, and it wouldnt be hard. I could do it with some 486's (or better) netbooting off of an OpenBSD server. It wouldnt be hard to do and there are plenty of how-to's out there for the BSDs and Linux. I dont know about Windows, but I got something from a company that does vnc thin clients which might work. If you are interrested and say please Ill dig out the brochure and post an URL if they have one.

 

[Garion]

There's one other very popular option - You could use a beefy Windows 2000 Server in with Terminal Services enabled. It's like "PC Anywhere on Steroids" - Multiple users can connect to the same machine and open up "virtual" sessions. Each user looks like they are running alone on the box. Very cool stuff.

Nice thing is that the client requirements are EXTREMELY minimal and quite flexible. Pretty much any PC will do the trick, even one running Windows 3.11 Once you're connected it looks just like you're running Windows 2000 on that box and you get to share the performance of the server. Local performance doesn't matter a bit, as long as it can keep up with the display. There's even some "thin client" computers that support it - No hard drive, no nothing, just a screen, a keyboard, a mouse and the client software in ROM.

Very cool stuff and, very expensive. If you win the lottery, you can add Citrix Metaframe on top of it, to extend the client reach to the Mac, to Unix, to DOS - Pretty much anywhere. Citrix is incredible - One of the coolest apps you've ever seen once you figure out how much you can do with it.

- G

 

[Nothinman]

One of the coolest apps you've ever seen once you figure out how much you can do with it.

Then you look at the receipt after you realize they can't get remote printing to work reliably and they recommend you reboot it nightly, and you wonder wtf they did with all that money.

 

[L3Guy]

<< then have dumb terminals >>



This comes up in different forms over the years.

You need a fast machine to act as server.

You need to decide what hardware / software for the terminals.
Classic VT-100 style. - Uses RS-232
Telnet - Uses Ethernet on PC
X-terminal - Uses Ethernet with either a dedicated x-terminal or a pc running the x-terminal "server" application.
Remote control software. Uses PC, with serial , Ethernet or Dial-up. PC-anywhere and carbon copy are two of several programs that run on a PC.
Microsoft Terminal Services. Part of WIN 2000 and XP server. Functions like other remote control packages.


You need to decide how your "terminal" communicates.
RS-232
Ethernet.

The advantage is that the data is centrally located on one machine. Only one place to load applications, data,
Disadvantage: Its generally much cheaper to buy 2 fast PC's than two terminals and a server that is faster than the "fast" PC's.

Depending on what you had in mind, very do-able. Practical, that?s really up to you.

Hope this helps;

Doug

 

[Garion]

<< One of the coolest apps you've ever seen once you figure out how much you can do with it.

Then you look at the receipt after you realize they can't get remote printing to work reliably and they recommend you reboot it nightly, and you wonder wtf they did with all that money. >>



*grin* -.. "And if you could run it on FreeBSD, it would be perfect!"

Actually, if you get it fine tuned, Citrix is very stable - I've run Citrix servers without a reboot for months and had no problems. Printing is probably the largest challenge, but for a desktop replacement it's no biggie - Just setup print queues to all the printers on the server and print that way - Don't mess with client printing.

Citrix fills an interesting niche in the market - There's a lot of old non client/server or web-based apps out there that simply transfer too much bandwidth to be run across a WAN. At my organization, we have dozens of Citrix servers with thousands of clients who couldn't do their work without it.

One thing to note - Citrix is a patch, nothing more. It gets you by until your app can be re-written to be bandwidth-friendly across a WAN. It shouldn't be the long-term solution unless there are no other options.

- G

 

[blstriker]

However, running Terminal Services in application mode requires additional licensing after a certain period of time. I'm not sure if TS will stop working or anything of the time period though.

 

[Thor86]

It's like "PC Anywhere on Steroids"

LOL.

 

[Nothinman]

Just setup print queues to all the printers on the server and print that way - Don't mess with client printing.

Not really an option when all of your print queues are all managed through NDS.

One thing to note - Citrix is a patch, nothing more. It gets you by until your app can be re-written to be bandwidth-friendly across a WAN. It shouldn't be the long-term solution unless there are no other options.

I don't think so, Citrix is a big boon for central managment. Instead of just roaming/mandatory profiles you've taken it a step further and made it extremely easy to keep all your users coralled. Sure there are people who need full fledged desktops, but just weeding out the ones that don't lowers your help desk calls and keeps you saner (more sane?).