How To Install Windows 7 Thin Client

The right way to practise old-PC-to-sparse-customer conversions

Turning old PCs to sparse clients can help go on the Capex associated with VDI downwards, but a bad conversion can spell back up troubles for Information technology.

When you're ready to deploy VDI only you've got tons of PCs sitting on users' desks, y'all can plow those PCs into sparse clients. Simply y'all have to do it the right way, otherwise you'll come across fewer benefits of VDI.

The existing estate of desktop PCs and laptops is often a major consideration with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments. In some companies, there is thousands of dollars' worth of hardware sitting on workers' desks, and when you're ready to deploy VDI, the hardware isn't always ready to exist written off or returned from its lease. The new desktops are shiny virtual machines living in the information eye, just what do y'all do with the old PCs?

A poor PC to thin client conversion will negate operational benefits of VDI.

A quick Internet search of what to do with old PCs leads to suggestions such equally turning them into domicile servers or media centers, but neither of those are for business uses. Usually, companies can plough the PCs into sparse clients until they tin can be retired, which is how many shops defer the Capex of thin clients to the twelvemonth after the Capex for data middle VDI. Only the way you lot turn an old PC into a thin customer will determine whether yous become sparse client benefits. A poor PC to thin client conversion will negate any operational benefits from your VDI deployment.

PC to thin client conversion best practices

The simplest way to make a PC into a thin client is to install your VDI client and put a shortcut on the desktop. This will give users access to their VDI desktop without removing their pre-VDI admission. It's a quick, like shooting fish in a barrel and inexpensive conversion, but a dirty solution that leaves backside the old PC. Nil stops employees from using their quondam PCs exactly the way they always have, which means you lot need to maintain the former desktop PC also as the new VDI desktop. Unless you remove the ability to go work done using the PC, you still need to support that PC.

To take away the user's admission to the PC, you'll have to make the VDI customer the but thing on the PC. There are a few applications around that will supplant the usual Windows Explorer shell with something that provides the VDI client. These frequently withal require that the user log on to the PC, but that logon also launches the VDI client. Shell replacement makes the local applications unavailable to the user; only the VDI desktop is visible. This is the to the lowest degree you can exercise to ensure that everyone uses their VDI desktop.

The down side is that y'all nonetheless accept a normal operating system on the PC, so you'll however need antivirus software and you'll have to deploy patches. Besides, workers are still using a full PC, so all the hardware that supported Windows is still in apply. If a hd fails, you lot will need to find a replacement, and then power consumption will be hundreds of watts, rather than tens of watts as is the example with a sparse client.

To get some of the support benefits of thin clients, you need to strip downwards the software within the device on the user's desk. Yous tin do this with sparse client conversion tools which use a thin client operating system in place of Windows on existing PCs. Naturally, this works best if the thin client vendor you lot have selected for when you replace the PCs also provides a PC conversion tool.

With conversion tools, you can deploy a sparse customer Os onto the existing difficult disk, allowing thin client management tools to manage the device. This removes the patching and antivirus update requirements, and it allows a unmarried tool to manage erstwhile PC hardware and new sparse clients. Putting a new Os onto erstwhile hardware is a adequately simple process and you can usually apply it to a large population of desktop PCs quickly. The downside of turning PCs into sparse clients in software-only is that all the old PC hardware is still on the desk in front of the user. If the hardware is old, then it may be decumbent to failure, which means yous'll have to make desk-side parts replacements.

There are as well conversion tools that replace the PC difficult deejay with a flash-based boot media. Some thin client vendors ship their PC conversion tool equally a piece of hardware, typically a small Disk-On-Module (DOM) that plugs into the deejay controller in place of the old difficult disk.

The DOM becomes the boot deejay and holds the thin client operating organisation. DOM-based methods to turn a PC into a thin client have a bit more than deploying because you lot need to open up every PC's case to unplug the old hard disk and install the DOM. The benefit is that the onetime hard disk doesn't consume power and isn't at risk of failing, then it's unlikely you lot'll need to return to users' desk-bound. Even improve, yous can deploy many of the software-only thin client conversion tools onto a DOM. Even if your thin client vendor doesn't transport on DOM y'all tin yet remove hard disks.

Different ways of converting a PC to a thin client bring unlike benefits. It will cost more at the first to make the PC more thin-client like, paying off over time as support costs decrease. Always keep in mind that converting a PC to a thin client does not give the PC an infinite lifetime. Await to supercede the hardware before its failure rate becomes high. The ultimate thin client is ane designed from the starting time for no other purpose. Repurposing PCs is only an acting measure out.