Using thin clients with hosted Windows VMs on a central server?

Say you're a small to medium sized company who is currently using computers that are still in good working condition but are end-of-life and no longer supported. Your internal network is robust and high speed, and you can hook in more powerful servers in the server room. Would it be possible to instead of replacing all of the computers convert them into thin-clients that link to virtual Windows machines running on a dedicated server? The resources allocated to each system can match what they are needed for, and over time the central server can be expanded and upgraded while still using the old hardware as thin clients, and over time they can be replaced with cheaper and more efficient units. And if a user has hardware issues they can just login on a new thin client and continue with no data loss.

nevermind I was able to research multisession configurations. Right now our plan is to reroute the network so the old desktops are only able to connect to the server hosting the user sessions and have them locked down so only the remote desktop client will run. We have a couple months to trial this setup and decide if paying for a rdp license will be better then just replacing all of the computers. thinstation has network boot so we can completely rip all storage drives out of the computers

Futurdreamz said:

nevermind I was able to research multisession configurations. Right now our plan is to reroute the network so the old desktops are only able to connect to the server hosting the user sessions and have them locked down so only the remote desktop client will run. We have a couple months to trial this setup and decide if paying for a rdp license will be better then just replacing all of the computers. thinstation has network boot so we can completely rip all storage drives out of the computers

Click to expand...

That's up to the accountants etc. But remember so many people have good gear at home and especially in I.T if using equipment in an office is a horrendous experience compared with home stuff (usually also purchased privately) then people will be even more reluctant to switch from WFH -- Working From Home - for coming in to an office. Cloud VDI can be viable for whole slews of business and end client users whatever OS they have on their own private desktops.

I'd suggest a better way would be to enable those who already have decent gear to be able to connect to a "Cloud" infrastructure and just keep a bare minimum of those "Thin Clients".

For this sort of stuff there's no 100% one size fits all solution. You have to be flexible and get the best bang for buck both from employers and employees (and externals too) these days. --Not an easy choice -- but presumably that's what decent management (does it actually exist any more ??) is paid to do.

Cloud computing is perfectly safe and viable and can be very cost effective - but remember now people won't put up with really aging infrastrcure (particularly old Video resolutions) and no private Internet connections. Old hardware even with cloud infrastructure won't give you 4K UHD video resolution etc on an aging 2012 type of PC. !!!!

Cheers
jimbo

Hmm, good point. It doesn't cost as much to ensure the keyboards and mice are higher quality ones, and most of the monitors are at least 1080p. So far the remote session is responsive enough with the hardware used. We can ensure that users who work from home are restricted from transferring data to or from the sessions over usb or their local networks. We're exploring getting some portable thin clients, but it was impressed on us that they do need quality screens and keyboards. We are exploring buying some cheap quality big screened laptops like lenovo chromebooks or ideapads, once we confirm that we can properly secure access to the user's servers and that the connection is stable enough for regular use. Otherwise most of the people who regularly work remote already have recently upgraded systems that they'll just continue to use.