Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing solutions for some of the most frequently asked questions posed to our ThinManager Technical Support team. This weekly feature will help educate ThinManager users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation. Great technical support is an essential part of the ThinManager platform, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible.
Q- We found an issue that we are looking to resolve. With the user and user’s desktop in a different domain than the ThinManager server, the ThinManager software installed on the user’s desktop asks for a username and password. We don’t know what to enter? User’s name, password? Server username, password? Is there a way to have the ThinManager software installed on the user’s desktop authenticate using Windows security?
A – ThinManager does try to use the current user’s credentials to log into a remote ThinServer. If that user doesn’t have sufficient privileges on the server that it’s connecting to it will prompt for a password. By default, ThinManager only lets users in the administrators group connect. You will need to use the same domain as the server or a local account to connect. An easy way to check is to have the user log onto the console of the server and open ThinManager. If it can connect locally, that user should be able to connect from a remote ThinManager installation.
-TM
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Q- What is the function of multicast, and smart multicast? Is it just used to speed the download of client software and configuration when a group of clients all come on line at the same time?
A – All multicast does is enable the firmware to be downloaded a little bit faster to the clients. It allows it to be transferred to multiple clients at once instead of one at a time. Most of the time the difference between using multicast and not isn’t noticeable, or at least is negligible.
-TM
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Q- I can’t communicate with my clients. When looking at the Thin Client tree the icon is red. Is it a configuration issue?
A – If it is red then the ThinManager interface isn’t talking to the ThinServer database engine that runs as a service. Try right-clicking on the red icon and select “Reconnect”. If that doesn’t work go to Services and restart the ThinServer service.
Our ThinManual has a troubleshooting section in the back on page 39.
-TM
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Q- Are there any recommendations regarding the deployment of CALs? If CALs are used in per device mode with mirrored or redundant mode (2 x terminal server nodes) and the license server node fails will an issue occur with client access and licensing? Do I need additional CALs to cover this and perhaps split them over the two terminal servers or is one CAL per client device on one license server sufficient?
A – I would use Per Device. Each thin client needs to use a unique user name. If you have 10 thin clients you will have 10 users. At this point it doesn’t matter, you could use 10 Device or 10 User TS/RDS CALs. But, if you are running multiple copies of an application, like on a MultiMonitor box you might need to have the extra sessions log in as unique users, raising the user count while keeping the device count the same. Or, if you have a box that you allow multiple people to log into this would require more User licenses than Device licenses.
-TM
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