[Thinlinc-technical] RES: More users / Less servers

[Peter Åstrand]

On Tue, 11 Aug 2009, Marcos de Souza Trazzini - Avancera wrote:

> Why is it funny? 74MB per user on GNOME seems to be impossible for me,
> please ask this person what is the big secret of this miraculous GNOME mem
> usage...

I don't know the details, but it could be that this person for example 
runs an older GNOME version, plus, most likely does not "surf the modern 
web".

Btw, I just tried running GNOME on one or our systems and it was quite 
easy to get down to 118 MiB. (In this case, I removed non-essential 
programs such as Bluetooth support, screensaver etc, plus the actual 
Xserver, so that only the GNOME processes was counted.)


>> If you consider VDI installations, especially with Windows
>> Vista or 7, then 1 or 2 GiB per concurrent user is more typical.
>>
> Humm, two points here: (1) You´re right about Winvows Vista, which is really
> a memory eater, but I don´t see anyone using it on VDI environments. Here is
> much more common to see Windows XP on VDI machines.

XP has been the "standard" VDI OS in the rest of the world as well. The 
problem is just that it's obsolete: The ability to buy support (even 
"extended") disappeared 1 month ago. I know that some organizations 
doesn't care about this, but personally, I would never build up a new 
infrastructure based on an obsolete operating system.


> (2) Windows 7 memory footprint is really (expressively!) lower than 
> Vista,

Perhaps, I haven't seen any real-world data yet.


> and Microsoft also
> claim to offer integrated solutions using Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V
> that greatly reduces VDI guest OS memory consumption.

Seeing is believing...



>> It's clear that there is no such thing as a "standard"
>> desktop; your mileage may vary...
>>
> In fact, when I mean a "standard" desktop, I mean a desktop focused on
> general user needs over ThinLinc sessions, that is basically get access to
> their published applications, interact with files and simple devices and

Yes, but which applications? The resource requirements are very different.


>> or $7.5 per concurrent user. This is much less than the costs
>> associated with software licenses. For example, the ThinLinc
>> subscription currently costs $75 per concurrent user.
>>
> Despite the hardware costs, we also have competitors solutions that require
> less hardware to run (like Terminal Server os GO-Global). So, if I got your

Please compare apples with apples. ThinLinc is not GNOME, and ThinLinc is 
not Linux.

One can argue, though, that some standard Linux desktop consumes more 
memory than a similar Windows Terminal Server session. This is probably 
true. A minimal WTS session is very lean. But when you start adding 
applications, the difference mostly evens out.

If you want to run a Windows desktop instead of Linux one, since this 
perhaps scales better with your application mix (or for some other 
reason), feel free to do so with ThinLinc. As you probably know, we have 
put a lot of effort into making ThinLinc the best platform integration 
product. ThinLinc does not restrict you to a certain desktop type or 
application server operating system. Being able to mix applications and 
platforms is one of the main features with our product.


Regards, 
---
Peter Åstrand		ThinLinc Chief Developer
Cendio AB		http://www.cendio.com
Wallenbergs gata 4
583 30 Linköping	Phone: +46-13-21 46 00