Network/Server admins - Vmware View -Thin client manager?

[turbostang]

Do any of your companies use thin clients?

We're in the midst of standing up a Vmware View5 environment to support about 350 thin clients. The server side is made up of 6 HP DL360's with 192Gb. The clients are the HP T5565Z's. The Gues OS's are Win7 64b.

We're having a hell of a time with the client management portion. The HP software sucks and it seems that there's one or two people in all of HP that know much about it. If any.

The clients came with 4.6 on them and didn't even support 5.0 at the time of purchase. Finally 5.0 was released, but getting it out to the clients is the problem - The HP software sucks, and has little in the way of logging etc..

I know it's a shot in the dark, but do any of you guys have experience with some 3rd party client management utility?

[ceyko]

I'm not going to be much help here, but we (read not me directly, just my company and people I work with daily) had success with Cisco UCS/VDI/VMWare deployments (I've done all but the actual VDI portion).

The problem is companies tend to go the slightly cheaper route and the DL360s kind of enforce that in this case.

My main question to you, is did you deploy it internally or did you have a partner deploy it? Either way, I strongly recommend engaging a partner to get this resolved.

[turbostang]

Well, we had a partner deploy it, or at least get us started. It was a huge mess -The guy they put out at our shop was just hired and never even met the owner of the vendor. He was a wierd duck to say the least...

Now, we've hired another vendor to help out with resolving some bugs and so far so good.. but they don't have a lot of experience with managing the physical clients themselves.

The 360's should be fine as they are, and should be over-spec'd for this application (only 400 users)... but I'd rather have something else myself. We're eventually going to change over to Atlantis/Elio software and try to recover some of the cluster overhead that way - It's supposedly a great product. We'll see I guess.

I just can't imagine that there's no better way to manage these clients and no one seems to know about it. lol.

[ceyko]

Lesson learned on these things, that's why we try and demo everything we can sell. HOPING that customers see the 5% cost difference it worth it for a variety of reasons.

You're correct, we're about to deploy VDI for 2000 end points on marginally larger setup (UCS version) than what you have. That's should be quite ample for 350 endpoints.

Remember though, -generally speaking- VDI is kind of cutting edge. IMO, it's a great investment for a company even with the initial cost for various different reasons.

Understand, I don't do HP - other than some hardware. In the Cisco world the customer can lean on Cisco/Cisco TAC/the partner to get these things resolved. Where is HP/VMWare support during all of this for you?

[turbostang]

Lesson learned on these things, that's why we try and demo everything we can sell. HOPING that customers see the 5% cost difference it worth it for a variety of reasons.

You're correct, we're about to deploy VDI for 2000 end points on marginally larger setup (UCS version) than what you have. That's should be quite ample for 350 endpoints.

Remember though, -generally speaking- VDI is kind of cutting edge. IMO, it's a great investment for a company even with the initial cost for various different reasons.

Understand, I don't do HP - other than some hardware. In the Cisco world the customer can lean on Cisco/Cisco TAC/the partner to get these things resolved. Where is HP/VMWare support during all of this for you?

Yeah, we had a very small scale demo and the business line liked it - so we bought in.

Dollars and cents, it's well worth it - from all aspects, until you get to storage!!

Cutting edge is correct, there's VERY few companies out there who are using Win7, Vmware View5 etc.. That's where most of the problems come from.


....for whatever reason, someone signed off on buying these clients knowing that they only supported view4.6 (we're running 5.0) on the back end. Just a couple weeks back, they finally release 5.0 for the client side - and we are just now testing as we speak. So far, it has appeared to resolve a LOT of our problems - but we're still getting some wierd random disconnects etc.

We have support with VMWare, but so far have largely been not-so-much help since it's more of a hardware/HP problem. HP, man, this part has been a beating - THEY don't even have anyone who seems to know that HPDM, or whatever that product is called. (Luckily, one of the other guys is working on that part, not me).

[ceyko]

THEY don't even have anyone who seems to know that HPDM, or whatever that product is called. (Luckily, one of the other guys is working on that part, not me).

Honestly, not doing sales pitch. Just talking and letting you know as an engineer this is why I don't mind selling Cisco's part numbers for VMWare/VDI...etc..etc...

Quite a bit better support all around. It's difficult to explain this to customers who see the cost difference. There is a difference between support for Cisco part numbers and their competitors - especially if you know the system and how to escalate.

It sounds like a lot of your problems though are design issues from a pre-sales perspective.

Curious, who is the partner(s)? It's a small world on this side of the fence. If you would feel betting PM'ing it - that's cool...I also understand it is really none of my business anyway.

[mustang_revival]

In this line of work you will always have growing pains with new software.

A Cisco solution will have its fair share of problems too. Cisco just started even selling servers. HP has been in the server business for decades.

Open a ticket and escalate the ticket till you get resolved or a workaround. You have to be a squeeky wheel. Ask for weekly or daily conference calls till they get you a fix.

[Ratt]

The IT Consulting company I work for has several certified VMWare techs/installers and we are a certified VMWare partner, and we have had success with all versions of VMWare. Shoot me a PM if you want our info.

[ceyko]

In this line of work you will always have growing pains with new software.

A Cisco solution will have its fair share of problems too. Cisco just started even selling servers. HP has been in the server business for decades.

Open a ticket and escalate the ticket till you get resolved or a workaround. You have to be a squeeky wheel. Ask for weekly or daily conference calls till they get you a fix.

I will vouch that the Cisco servers are rock solid though and work. I know it's hard to believe, but both the B and C series have been solid for all implementations I've done of them.