Virtualizing

RWBRWB Icrontian
edited July 2012 in Science & Tech
Long time no see!

I've been reading up on virtualizing, as I am interested in seeing how this could work for the company I work for. But there is just so much information on this topic and I am not sure where to start. I am familiar with running Virtualbox, I do that a lot already.

Some of the POTENTIAL ideas I've had for my company is virtualizing all the PC's with something like Zero Clients. We have only about 10 -12 PC's, and mostly do everything via web, with the only real applications being MS Office, and our ticketing system. These PC's are all ancient, and in need of replacement anyways.

I'm mostly just looking or advice on possible solutions you think I can look into, which clients would be good, is there a particular server OS I want to look into. I am actively researching this myself but I'm going through an information overload right now and feel the need for some guidance :)

Comments

  • AnnesAnnes Tripped Up by Libidos and Hubris Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    I've never actually used Citrix, but I hear it's baller.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    VMware also has desktop soft client solutions available, but same as Annes, no personal experience. For server stuff, you have Hyper V (Microsoft), VMWare ESXi (free) and ESX (upgrade, not free, varying prices for features), and Citrix (those are the big players just off the top of my head). You can virtualize specific servers like Exchange or app servers, and infrastructure, like networking, storage, etc.

    Some of those can do "anything" in terms of guest OS, but Hyper V is the most limited (not bad though) IIRC.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    RWB-- One of the things you might look at for some basic info is the docs found by searching on Linux K12 Project. This is server Virtualizing based(hosted virtualizing), with older dumber clients done routinely. It is one of the forerunners of the Cloud Computing efforts.

    In essence, a server that is more modern than the clients is used, but with K12 even older used servers were used first. They run one server per school computing lab, sometimes one per per classroom for classrooms where the teachers are teaching advanced style computing to young people by doing computing. A setup called an intranet is an earlier relation of K12 as it was before it developed into more full virtualization.

    Some folks who wanted to teach computing and have programs running on older donated mostly computers without needing to massively upgrade them (to save money) was done with Linux distros which are free, in K12. This can be done by anyone FOR small businesses in the same basic setup. It is more secure than the cloud, because the server for the intranet need not allow browsing on the web (Simply put no browser in the canned session hosted on the server for each client and make any connect the server may have to the web extremely secured from the clients by limiting what the client users can install themselves in their hosted session.)

    Small businesses that can only afford bare minimum for computing, and enterprises that are other than computing development related businesses can use the base principles of K12 and adapt them to more modern virtualization as money becomes available to modernize hardware. As the Cloud matures, and more modern servers are supported by Linux and Citrix (which is a kick-ass OS for virtualizing at large scale), more folks will move to the Cloud.

    You CAN host Windows sessions on a Linux server with VMWare these days, if you want to. But with the right server, you do not need to limit yourself to just Windows or Linux sessions-- you could give the users each two IDs, and set up the Session Server to feed Windows session to one ID and Linux and other Linux subversion apps to another ID. This could be done with an Intranet that is ID locked from user sessions accessing the inter-web.
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    Thanks, sorry for the late reply as I did read or attempt to read everything here and it helped. Looks like for what I wanted to do it'll just end up costing way too much. :|
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    Licensing is a bitch with VMs, typically.
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