thin client setup that allows video conferencing (and general video/youtube playback).

[thetoad]

There have been a number of thin clients that have been listed in the great deals section that people are using as servers, I'm trying to figure out if I can make a vdi setup for my elderly parents that would provide for their needs (if they can use zoom and video/youtube, everything else should work fine). Does anyone have experience if this can be done with Win 2012R2 out of the box. idea would be that I could manage the system remotely for them while enabling them to use the computer basically as they would expect. can connect a camera to upload photos, can use a usb webcam for zoom, watch youtube and the like videos... a beefy server to do all this is pretty cheap these days and my though process could cover their needs pretty well.

wondering if others have done this.

 

[Rand__]

Problem is that the only thing that 2012 supports out of the box is RDP and thats not really cutting it for video.
Protocolls like PCoIP/Blast/Citrix are optimized for that kind of workload and work much better.

I only use VMWare so thats all I can comment on; there you'd have three options
Set up vmware horizon (potentially $$) , maybe look if Horizon View direct connect works without server infrastructure (there is an extended trial for HView available atm), or option 3 would be getting a cheap Teradici workstation card that allows direct connection from a thin/zero client

Please not that unless you have a GPU passed through to your client vm you need at least a 2.4 GhZ CPU to get acceptable frames, more is better.

 

[thetoad]

I was looking at a dual cpu r720/hp g8 era machine for this purpose. They would need a passthrough GPU? (they both could manage it, as there's room, but I figured that they might be fast enough as is. but maybe based on what you said I'm wrong. The PCoIP cards seems relatively cheap ($35ish on ebay) is there any other cost for using them or does one just slap N in a machine and assign one to each vm?

 

[Rand__]

Ah I misread your initial post, I thought you want to get a thin client to remote connect to a server in your place.

What's the reason to run a thin client as a server if you want that to be placed locally in the first place?
Or thin client (small/silent @ your parents -> server @ your parents)?

 

[thetoad]

yes. I'd stick the server in their utility/furnace/work room (i.e. the unfinished part of the basement), make sure ethernet gets to their 2 workspaces and give them a thin client to use. If I use VDI and do it right, even if they mess up their VMs I'd think it be relatively easy to recover their systems without htem losing data (as data would be stored on server itself, not in VM). could also enable backups via the server instead of via each "workstation". (i.e. normal bulletpoints of value of VDI).

 

[Rand__]

Ok, then my points apply.

R720 should work, depending on cpu - less cores, higher frequency. Might get away without gpu then, else get cheap 2u quadros.

workstatiuon cards are actually for accessing physical boxes via thin clients, my bad, sorry.

You can try direct connect to the client vms potentially, or run a vdi trial to see if its working as expected. VMUG contains appropriate licenses.
Maybe there are free alternatives (xen based) but i have no idea

 

[thetoad]

hmm, my company partners with vmware (PCF/PKS stuff) my group actually owns the code that integrates into those environments. wonder if I can ask our product owner to reach out to his counterpart at vmware to see if they can throw some licenses are way for developer personal use at home. worse they can say is no.

 

[Rand__]

Well as mentioned there's an extended trial available so you can try it out first.
For full fledged setup you need View Connection Server and AD though...

Getting some licenses for personal use would be the cleanest solution o/c
O/c those licenses don't get sent to vmWare so nobody knows which one was used where...

But maybe think about whether this is really the best solution for your problem.
Two small Nucs and daily backup might suffice too. Just make sure they don't have the Admin pw ...

 

[Samir]

This is a very interesting topic since I moved my parents to thin clients once I discovered their completely malware and bogged down systems were just a problem with getting work done.

For video, I would even look at using some sort of linux that is a little better at keeping from becoming a mess--especially if you have some sort of template vm that it always starts from so it's essentially a fixed config.

But I would look into a full out computer for hardware for this like the tiny form factored systems that cost a little more than thin clients but have a lot more local power for doing the job.

 

[Samir]

Interesting to see this topic bumped a few years later and that I didn't reply with what I put (hacked) into place for my aging parents while they were still alive. (They have passed on but their systems outlived them.)

It first started out with something dead simple since their needs were dead simple and browsers at the time of this era still had full access to the Internet--3x Neoware xp embedded thin clients in stock form with enhanced write filter on. 2x were set up as workstations with a usb drive for portable programs and shortcuts set up on the desktop, 1x was simply a flash drive and then shared on the network for 'storage'.

The next iteration was using xp on some old P4-era pentiums I found in a utility chase. After loading them up with 2GB of ram and imaging off their stock software on their hard drives, I loaded a fresh install of xp and used the xp steadystate add-on to configure an experience similar to their Neoware thin-client 'workstations'. Because these pentiums were full computers, I was able to add gpus that accelerated pdf viewing and they had faster NICs (gigabit vs 100Mb), so they were quite a bit faster. I partitioned the hard drives so now the portable applications lived on the same physical drive, but on a different non-write protected partition that I could add and remove applications as needed. I still kept the UI pretty bare with only a few items in the start menu and desktop--just the basics they needed. After discovering my father's browser getting corrupted after a few weeks of use (he would click on anything), I used sfk set up in a batch file to always copy a 'clean' version of the browser the first time he was using it for the day--fixed that problem permanently.

On the 'server' side, I actually didn't do much--added a gigabit NIC in the single PCI slot in these devices, upgraded the usb flash drive to an external hard drive and added 2x more that were backups of the first that refreshed every 15 minutes via native xcopy in a batch file, and that's it.

While my parents have both passed, these systems and setup was their primary computers from about 2012 to 2019 and 2020 respectively for my mom and dad. They still work today even though some hardware has been replaced along the way (1 power supply, 1 cd-rom drive).