From: "Manuel Wolfshant", Wednesday, April 22, 2009 5:42 PM
Well, if you can implement a LTSP-like solution, good for you. In my case all users already had local linux workstations running C5, the XP was needed only for a couple of proprietary applications and for a limited period of time. The problem came from the fact that despite using what I call pretty decent hw, most of the users did not have hardware capable of doing full virt but we had to start the project really FAST ( The software supplier informed me that the proprietary applications cannot run on linux the very day the project started, despite doing 3 months of preparations for the project). Basically I had no choice but create VMs on a server with spare resources (which happened to be in another city than the users). Your use case is different :)
Yes. All of my current users have WinXP. I am merely moving their workstations into VM's in order to increase their processing power.
I am interested in the multiple connections allowed with VNC for support type console sharing. When connected with RDP, the console of the VM has a login screen, so you can't use VNC to the console at the same time as a RDP connection...
It's not really like you describe it. With the proper patch, several different RDP users can share the VM, just as an 2003 server would do for more money. In our case, this was important because - at least in the beginning of the project - the number of simultaneous users exceeded the number of available VMs As of VNC sharing the console .. I am not sure what are you speaking about. As far as I know, VNC is quite reluctant to share a single desktop with several users, unless the connections are R/O. And in a LAN the speed is acceptable, but via remote links VNC quickly becomes "unpleasant". If you go the VNC way, I strongly suggest to examine NX instead.
Yes. Read-only secondary connections for support. Since this is a long term solution (permanent), I get to design for sufficient resources.
I have only networked printers, too, but in this case it was not about a printer but a hardware toy (ASIC development board).
I have one device in several of my offices that the vendor specifies a brain-dead serial cable. I'm expecting this to be my only hardware hurdle.