The typical industrial user is a special case, and therefore does not fit into the Terminal Server sizing requirements usually advertised by Microsoft. This article discusses some of the factors associated with most industrial applications that may make them unique.
So What is a Thin Client?
A true Thin Client:
1. Stores nothing locally 2. Has no high-level applications 3. Works like a dumb terminal does on a mainframe
Thin Clients and Total Cost of Ownership
According to the Gartner Group, the overall Total Cost of Ownership benefit of Thin Client terminals over standard PCs is about 32 percent. For a system with 2,500 workstations a switch to Thin Clients could pay for itself in as little as three months.
So What is a Thin Client?
As best I can tell, Tim Negris is the man who coined the term Thin Client when he was with Oracle. It originally described scaled down applications that ran in conjunction with a full version of an application that was loaded on a server.
When Windows OS versions that allowed multiple users came on the scene, one of the first hardware companies to start selling client hardware was Wyse with the introduction of their WinTerm in 1995. This made sense – Wyse was already a huge seller of “dumb” terminals for mainframes and providing a Windows Terminal was logical.
Building a Thin Client System
Question: We would like to put together a Thin Client system that will have a total of seven Thin Clients. While some of these clients will be standard Thin Client hardware, we would also like to use some of our PCs as clients as well. We also need to allow for some spare capacity for the future.
Can you please specify the hardware and software (ACP and Microsoft) requirements for a reliable system?
Answer: There are multiple ways to build this system. I will start by specifying the basic system (the minimum required) and then work up to a system with redundancy that will guarantee uninterrupted operation in almost every case. Each system will have the following four parts – the Thin Clients, the hosting Windows Terminal Server, the Microsoft software and the ACP software.
Forklifts give new meaning to “Mobile Computing”
Imperial Tobacco Canada has been Canada’s leading tobacco company for over eighty years, producing two-thirds of Canada’s cigarettes including du Maurier, Players, and Matinee.
Imperial is currently running a cigarette manufacturing plant in Guelph, Ontario, and a tobacco processing facility in Aylmer, Ontario. Their corporate office is in Montreal.
The Challenge: Deploying Inventory Management Software on Moving Forklifts
Imperial Tobacco was dispatching fork- lifts to move materials and products with an old-fashioned paper-based requisition and confirmation system. A computer- based system would be faster and more responsive, with greater accuracy and easi- er record keeping.
(Don’t) Stop the Presses
Thin Clients the solution when downtime is not an option
Known as “New York’s Hometown Newspaper”, The New York Daily News began printing in 1919 and soon became a favorite for is use of photographs, as well as its news, gossip and sports section. Its daily circulation of over 800,000 makes it the 7th most popular paper in the country and the second most widely read of New York’s 10 papers.
Some of its more famous headlines: “Who’s a Bum” (describing the Brooklyn Dodgers championship of 1955) and “Ford to City: Drop Dead”, run when President Gerald Ford refused the City of New York assistance during its financial crisis of the 1970’s.
Kruse Controls Selects ACP’s Thin Client Technology for Dredging Operation
Twenty miles west of Palm Beach sits about 5500 acres that are in need of a good dredging. And after being upgraded with ThinManager Ready Thin Clients, the Sam Houston, owned by Palm Beach Aggregates in Florida, is just the dredge for the job.
There are six pits on the property, rang- ing in size from 111 to 200 acres. When the Palm Beach County Water Authority pur- chased water storage rights they specified the contours they required with final depths ranging from 45 to 50 feet. Jay Wise, Ed Pabst, and Doug Coulter of Kruse Controls (the project integrator), along with Chris Branas of Phillips & Jordan (par- ent company of Palm Beach Aggregates) are building a new automation package on the 30-inch dredge to control swing, ladder depth and stepping ahead. This allows the creation of the specific profile without con- stant operator input.
Total Cost of Ownership
A Thin Client computer runs what looks like a full Windows NT 4.0 operating system on each Client installed in a factory. This is accomplished by having a powerful server running a version of Microsoft’s NT 4.0 designed for Thin Clients, NT Terminal Server 4.0. This version of Windows allows multiple users to log in and establish a full Windows session running on the server. Each user gets a dedicated share of memory, some slices of CPU time, and access to the server’s disks and applications.
ThinManager Version History
Since its introduction in 1999 ThinManager has undergone a number of improvements. But the most significant changes have come with the latest releases.
Here is a look at the most important features added and enhanced since ThinManager 2.3.
Introduced in ThinManager 2.4