I am trying to revive a school's computer lab. The lab's original sponsors discontinued their services and donated all the hardware to the school. The original setup was done on Ubuntu server that hosted 20 thin clients to also run Ubuntu.
- I was able to start up the original config, but with limited
stability. They asked me to rather loot to a Windows solution. So My
current setup is using Windows 2012 R2 data-center as the server and
CCBoot as my PXE host.(hardware summery at end) - I was able to get the client to boot up to the windows loading
screen, but then it either freeze or blue screen. I wanted to use
windows xp embedded for the client OS however I am unable to legally
obtain a copy of it. So My options are Windows 7(ultimate and
embedded), Windows 8(Pro and embedded).
Server: - DELL PowerEdge R200
- Single socket Server Mobo
- 2 Lan ports
- Core2Duo 2.6Ghz
Thin Client:
- WYSE VXO
- 512MB Ram
Running tests, I was unable to boot anything up properly with different hardware setups. I used My own server running AMD PhenomII x6 with 16GB ram and an SSD but I still cant't get it to boot. I went over to use a Dell Latitude E4200 laptop with 2GB Ram as the client but that still made no difference.
While running the tests however I noticed that when the boot sequence starts the network activity would go up and transfer 45.2MB(Windows 7) 56.7MB(Windows 8) and then stop. This is the same consistently.
Best Answer
This Wyse is a linux integrated. They are linux ready and I seen some guide to install a linux onto them, but it's not a supported path. Its why your PXE boot work well in my opinion. The minimum memory required for Windows 7 & + is 1 Gig, so the Wyse don't meet the minimum spec.
RDP to a session from the Wyse directly to a RDS server would be a better idea, as each user will have more CPU and RAM to open their application. Making a seemless connect via the .ini would be easy.
In that plan, if a Wyse broke and you replace it with a new's one, the RDP will still work and the. ini too. (more scalable)