What is Thin Client & How Thin Clients Work?

What is a Thin Client?

A thin client is a stateless, fanless desktop terminal that has no hard drive. All features typically found on the desktop PC, including applications, sensitive data, memory, etc., are stored back in the data center when using a thin client.

A thin client running Remote Desktop Protocols (RDP), like Citrix ICA and Windows Terminal Services, and/or virtualization software, accesses hard drives in the data center stored on servers, blades, etc. Thin clients, software services, and backend hardware make up thin client computing, a virtual desktop computing model.

Thin clients are used as a PC replacement technology to help customers immediately access any virtual desktop or virtualized application. Thin clients provide businesses a cost-effective way to create a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Thin clients are utilized in various industries and enterprises worldwide that all have different requirements but share common goals. The cost, security, manageability, and scalability benefits of thin clients are all reasons that IT personnel are exploring –and switching– to thin clients.

Cost-wise, the price per seat of a thin client deployment has dropped to the point where it is more cost effective than regular PCs. This has been a claim that many in the thin client industry have made in the past, but the fact is that the technology that has been developed within the past year has made it a definitive reality.

                       

How Thin Clients Work?

Thin clients run an operating system locally and carry flash memory rather than a hard disk. Since it has no hard drive or local storage, all applications and data are stored on a central server, but advanced thin client technologies help users still experience the same look and feel as on a PC. Thin clients allow for local printing, audio and serial device support, web browsing, terminal emulation and can combine local processing with network computing.

By hosting more of what users need remotely, the thin client devices used to access that data can become both more powerful and cheaper. Additionally, as individual connection protocols improve, through developments like Remote FX and Citrix HDX, businesses are able to gain that much more effectiveness out of virtual desktops.
A major part of a thin client solution is the thin client management console. The management console such as Echo, is a virtual appliance that can be installed on your Server to remotely manage all of the deployed thin clients. It then can create, clone, and push out the customized image to the deployed thin client devices. This allows IT administrators to freely access any device that is connected to the server, as well as pushing through certificates, software packages, as well as upload full disk images. This proves to be an invaluable tool for both simple and complex VDI environments.

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