[FreeNX-kNX] virtualbox, sdl, rdp, freenx, xen

[drew einhorn]

On Feb 18, 2008 3:31 AM, Alastair Johnson <alastair at solutiontrax.com> wrote:

> You could do that, but unless you're only running a few clients it'll be
> much
> more resource hungry than the terminal server, and probably won't save you
> much on licensing.
>
> The terminal server has a single Windows instance with a relatively small
> resource increase for each client. Each virtualised Windows is a full
> Windows
> install so it needs the resources (disk, memory, CPU etc.) to support
> that.
> It doesn't matter if you're using VirtualBox, VMware, QEmu, Xen since
> they're
> all just providing a virtual machine. So the virtualised route probably
> needs
> more hardware resource to run on.
>

I think Xen cloned file systems will help with disk resources.
They are one my list of things to try.
I may be disappointed or have misunderstood some of the below
My understanding is you do a basic install on a file system.
Then you make a read only copy.
clients do a unionfs (hmm, this probably only works with linux filesystems)
mount where the client has its own read/write filesystem layered on top
of the shared read only fs each client only stores the blocks that are
different
from the read only file system..


Hmm.  I wonder if there is a file system independent way of doing this that
does cover windows file systems.

It's a lazy allocation method disk blocks are only allocated
when they are written, you run this risk of a run away process grabbing all
available disk and other processes having hard failures when they run out
of available disk.  There are also performance and stability issues.

Most desktops do have more resources than they really need.
So one hefty server can often do the work of several desktops.


> I'm no expert, but you probably need a Windows license for each VM too, at
> about the same cost as your client access license for the terminal server.
> So
> you might save yourself the cost of Win 2k3. I'll leave you to work out
> the
> costs for your installation, but I don't think it'll save you much if
> anything.
>




>
> Now if you can get the apps to run under Wine, or find an equivalent to
> run on
> linux...


I rarely see anything I need that works for me under Wine,
don't get me wrong. there's lots of stuff I never use, that does work with
wine,
but when I look at a specific app I really need it's usually not there.
maybe coming soon, but not there now.

and the "equivalents" do work for me

Wish I could talk more users into the "equivalents".
But many of them are still being stubborn.

Some times they do need obscure apps for which there is
really no "equivalent" that does meet

And I do understand their resistance to learning to use a new tool
when they have already put a lot of time, money, and energy
learning to use the tools they are comfortable with.


>
> On Thursday 14 February 2008, Chris Fanning wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I imagine that I'm not the only one in the list that has to deal with
> > windows applicactions. Although life would be a lot easier without
> > them, it doesn't look like we can escape from M$ completely (at least
> > for the moment).
> >
> > In my case, I have users sharing the same gnu/linux box runnng KDE
> > sessions and a seperate w2k3 server running window-terminal-server for
> > windows apps via RDP.
> >
> > Yesterday a colleague opened his xfce sessions via freeNX and
> > installed Virtualbox. Within 15 minutes he had installed XP. And that
> > got us thinking about the need for the w2k3 server and the expensive
> > terminal server licences.
> >
> > Virtualbox uses SDL (right?), that means we can circumnavigate RPD
> > (and the licences), couldn't we?
> > Each user could have his on virtual windows running on his kde desktop.
> >
> > After reading that SUN has recently bought Virtualvox and intends to
> > use it with xen,  we're wondering
> > Resource management of the virtaulbox instances would be important.
> > Perhaps this is where Xen comes into it. but how?
> >
> > I was hoping someone on the list might have an opinion on this.
> >
> > Thanks.
> > Chris.
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-- 
Drew Einhorn
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