On 7/15/11 9:14 AM, "Karen Schneider" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 
> My only comment back to Jeff is that your story would be more compelling if
> your email said, "A year ago, we deployed..."  Desktop virtualization
> stories nearly always seem to be in the future tense.

When I worked for Indiana University, their library IT group was considering
going the thin-client route.  This was roughly three years and I don't know
whether they followed through with that or not.  I think some of them are on
this list and might be able to answer.

I went virtual for servers several years ago and have never looked back.
It's the best thing.

Desktop virutalization has existed in the form of netbooting for a while.  I
saw a presentation five or so years ago about a university in Japan that had
all of their labs running in a netboot environment.  This was using Mac OS,
however.

I've also toyed with Ubuntu's LTSP [1] and was impressed with how easy it
was to setup.  It might not work for environments requiring specialized
software that doesn't run under Linux, but for stations just needing web
browsers for searching your catalog, it could be an option.

The Ubuntu setup requires an ubuntu server to dish out the images, however I
was able to run that under KVM, so a virtual server servering out virtual
clients.  That combined with clustering for your bare-metal servers would
get you pretty close to 100% uptime.

...adam

____________________________________________
Adam Wead
Systems and Digital Collections Librarian
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
216.515.1960 (t)
215.515.1964 (f)


1. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP


 
 
  
http://www.rockhall.com/
Rock & Roll: (noun) African American slang dating back to the early 20th Century. In the early 1950s, the term came to be used to describe a new form of music, steeped in the blues, rhythm & blues, country and gospel. Today, it refers to a wide variety of popular music -- frequently music with an edge and attitude, music with a good beat and --- often --- loud guitars.C 2005 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.
 
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