Killing the Business Desktop PC Softly
by Johan De Gelas on July 19, 2007 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
CCI, PC, or Workstation Blades: Does It Make Sense?
There is no question that both HP and IBM offer much more than hardware, and they focus on well-rounded solutions. Service and support, network and storage infrastructure, software deployment, and very low maintenance management: it's all there. That can save a lot of money. However, the most important question is: when does it make sense?
From a Total Cost of Acquisition (TCA) point of view, blade PCs and workstations blades are quite a bit more expensive than traditional desktops. We will ignore the cost of the central storage server, the software, and (most likely) the database server as these are necessary in both models. With traditional PCs you can also set a "roaming profile" that allows your PCs to be stateless as well, which helps to make sure that all (most?) data is saved to a central storage server. Let's first look at the blade PCs:
Next let's look at workstation blades. As IBM has the most interesting workstation blade for CAD engineers, we'll look at it.
TCO must save the CCI day of course. Both HP and IBM/Lenovo refer to the IDC TCO "The Tangible Benefits of Blade Clients" study. It describes the cost of each solution per year, over a period of 4 years.
The big problems with this IDC study are:
The profits that are reported here are probably a result of rethinking the system administration and software deployment process instead of being solely the virtue of blade PC technology. In other words, even if the company kept the desktop PCs, considerable savings would have appeared after the smarter system administration and software deployment processes were implemented.
Also note that the power consumption savings are nothing to write home about, even though this was recorded at a time when power hogging Pentium 4 reigned over the business desktop. So now that we have some insight into hard numbers, we can analyze things further.
There is no question that both HP and IBM offer much more than hardware, and they focus on well-rounded solutions. Service and support, network and storage infrastructure, software deployment, and very low maintenance management: it's all there. That can save a lot of money. However, the most important question is: when does it make sense?
From a Total Cost of Acquisition (TCA) point of view, blade PCs and workstations blades are quite a bit more expensive than traditional desktops. We will ignore the cost of the central storage server, the software, and (most likely) the database server as these are necessary in both models. With traditional PCs you can also set a "roaming profile" that allows your PCs to be stateless as well, which helps to make sure that all (most?) data is saved to a central storage server. Let's first look at the blade PCs:
- 20 blade PCs costs slightly less than $20000 (if you choose the HP bc2000 blade PC)
- One chassis (with switch) costs about $7000
- A thin client t5720 costs about $500-$600
Next let's look at workstation blades. As IBM has the most interesting workstation blade for CAD engineers, we'll look at it.
- An IBM HC10 with Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz 4MB L2), 2GB RAM, and NVIDIA FX1600M is a decent workstation and costs about $3000
- Workstation blades are bigger, so both IBM and HP require a full blown blade chassis. The chassis and switch cost about $7000 and provide housing for 14 blades
- A thin clients costs about $500-$600
TCO must save the CCI day of course. Both HP and IBM/Lenovo refer to the IDC TCO "The Tangible Benefits of Blade Clients" study. It describes the cost of each solution per year, over a period of 4 years.
The big problems with this IDC study are:
- It is sponsored by a vendor of blade PCs (Clearcube)
- It is based on the feedback of customers that have already implemented blade PCs
The profits that are reported here are probably a result of rethinking the system administration and software deployment process instead of being solely the virtue of blade PC technology. In other words, even if the company kept the desktop PCs, considerable savings would have appeared after the smarter system administration and software deployment processes were implemented.
Also note that the power consumption savings are nothing to write home about, even though this was recorded at a time when power hogging Pentium 4 reigned over the business desktop. So now that we have some insight into hard numbers, we can analyze things further.
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smokenjoe - Wednesday, July 25, 2007 - link
I just thought I would post some end user experience as these are not all that common. We had an intel based thin client. When they were fist implemented last year they were OK slower than the dated computers they replaced but usable. Unfortunatly as time went oth they started having more and more issues to the point that it was common to have only one working thin client out of 6. We had to boot the clerks off their old PIII computers from the dark ages because they were the only ones that worked. People literally jumped for joy when we got the PC's back.Without being part of the IT department it is hard to say where the fault was but at the bare minimum make sure you have people that have the training and security privileges to fix problems any time they are needed. I had multiple reports of "I cant fix that I dont have the security privileges we will have someone fix it on Monday."
Thank god they did not think the clerks important enough to upgrade or we would have been lost.
yanman - Monday, July 23, 2007 - link
Another alternative which is available through a mix of technologies is removing only the local storage of your corporate desktop fleet and replacing this with a PXE-boot solution. There are vendors that can allow iSCSI boot of XP installs via a proprietary solution using PXE.i.e. Dell Optiplex with onboard GbE, boots from PXE, loads iSCSI stack, mounts guest LUN on the SAN for it's XP image, boots. Possibly you could leave the local hard disk in and use it only for swap space.
Advantages
- Less forced change on the users
- Better workstation performance
- Retains the thin-client advantages of ensuring all data is on the SAN
Disadvantages
- Can significantly increase SAN and network utilisation
- Slightly exotic setup that may not be fully supported by the hardware vendor.
Ajax9000 - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
Could you please spell out VDI on page 9. I knew pretty much what was being talked about, but I still had to Google to be sure.The workstation blades are an interesting development. Would it be possible to do VDI over workstation blades?
I ask because where I work (a government department) went Citrix in about 2001. At that time performance was reasonable in Head Office, but flaky in the handful of regional offices. We had thin clients, skinny clients (PCs stripped down to act as thin clients -- to save on TCA of course), and fat clients for specialised uses. It worked quite well -- I'd run 20MB+ spreadsheets under Citrix and use a fat client for publishing & graphics apps that wouldn't run under Citrix.
The only problem was making sure IT didn't downgrade you from fat client. :-)
But the government then amalgamated us with some other agencies (with standard PC setups) and we went from ~800 staff to over 2500 staff with many regional offices with poor network connections. And there was much more specialised uses such as greatly expanded GIS/mapping, web mapping, publishing, etc. Trying to get a sensible IT setup took three years ... and then there was another round of amalgamations with another round of IT integration issues that still haven't been resolved (and again involving lots more GIS/mapping, web mapping, etc).
So, would it be possible to do VDI over workstation blades as a way of distributing ARCinfo "floating" licences, Adobe apps, etc, across multiple sites rather than having dedicated workstations in "fixed" sites?
RandyDGroves - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
This was a nice detailed review of CCI, but completely missed the fact that IBM is using PC-over-IP technology from Teradici (www.teradici.com) instead of a Thin Client. Unlike software solutions such as ICA, RDP, and RGS; Teradici's PC-over-IP processors use hardware to bridge the video, audio, and USB traffic between the desktop device (called a Portal) and the blade workstation. This enables a perception-free experience in which the end user cannot detect that their PC has been remoted. Furthermore, since the Portal only has a hardware decoder chip, it is lower power than a Thin Client.For full disclosure, I am the CTO for Teradici and obviously biased. But, here are some links to recent articles in other publications that may be of interest:
Wall Street Journal - http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1722520524296.ht...">http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1722520524296.ht...
EETimes - http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jht...">http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jht...
The Register - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/06/teradici_b...">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/06/teradici_b...
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
The briefing we got in IBM's blade HQ in Raleigh about the IBM HC10 was a lot more about the concept. The actual hardware and software was not discussed in detail. That is why I focused mostly on CCI, as I had been shown the exact specifications.florrv - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
As a network security manager for an F100, we've found a very useful niche for VDI technology: 3rd party developers.Rather than have a 3rd party connect directly into your dev environment, you set up a VDI environment and give them a controlled sandbox. This way, you can lock down what data goes back and forth to the 3rd party.
senseamp - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
As mentioned, this has been out for 8 years as SunRays.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray
You can take your badge out, go to any place in the company with a Sunray (like drop in office), put your badge in, and it will pop up the desktop where you left off. Unix (such as Solaris) is designed from ground up for this kind of work (multiple users running on same OS with remote display), so it works very well, if the network is behaving well. With star/open office and firefox/thunderbird, that's good enough for most office work, and if you need a lot of performance, you can dispatch jobs to bigger machines or compute farms in the company.
szaijan - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
Sun has been pushing the thin client architecture for years, yet there's no mention in the article. Having worked on multiple Sunray clusters, and many PC netwroks, I have the say the thin client setup is much better for day-to-day office and e-mail work, simply based on the lack of overhead in installation, bug resolution, boot times, et. al. Cost is much lower overall. The downside is that network problems make work impossible, while you can still utilize a PC when the network is down or overloaded. A decent netwrok infrastructure makes this a minor issue.All that said, CAD, Photoshop, 3D Modeling, et. al., while not impossible, are badly hampered by the mouse latency, and the precision needed for such endeavors just isn't there. Of course you can just add a work station to the network for employees who require that level of client power.
Adul - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
We've been on a mission to getting rid of our thin clients as they been a source of pain since they keep getting infected with viruses, we can't patch them with normal updates, etc.JohanAnandtech - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
Very interesting. As you might have noticed, there are a lot "should" and "might" in the article :-). Could you tell me what kind of thin clients you are using? Running XP Embbedded? Why can't you patch them?