Hi everyone, I've been asked to deploy a VDI solution based on our oVirt infrastructure. What we have in production is a 3.6 manager (standalone, not HE) with a 3.5 cluster (CentOS 6) and a 3.6 cluster (CentOS 7), iSCSI storage, fully redundant networking. What is not clear to me is the client side, especially because we have been asked to implement a thin client solution but I've been almost unable to find suitable devices. Is there anyone in this list willing to share his/her experience on this topic? Probably my search skill is low but I've only seen references to IGEL. Other brands? There is another strong requirement: our network infrastructure makes use of 802.1x to authenticate client devices and it would be highly advisable to respect that constraint. TIA, Giorgio.
Do you have a requirement for 3d acceleration on the VDI guests? On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 6:18 AM, Giorgio Bersano <giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone, I've been asked to deploy a VDI solution based on our oVirt infrastructure. What we have in production is a 3.6 manager (standalone, not HE) with a 3.5 cluster (CentOS 6) and a 3.6 cluster (CentOS 7), iSCSI storage, fully redundant networking.
What is not clear to me is the client side, especially because we have been asked to implement a thin client solution but I've been almost unable to find suitable devices.
Is there anyone in this list willing to share his/her experience on this topic? Probably my search skill is low but I've only seen references to IGEL. Other brands? There is another strong requirement: our network infrastructure makes use of 802.1x to authenticate client devices and it would be highly advisable to respect that constraint.
TIA, Giorgio. _______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
You can also use ansible to provision your 802.1x network gear along with the client machines, this way everything is provisioned the same way every time. On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 6:21 AM, Donny Davis <donny@fortnebula.com> wrote:
Do you have a requirement for 3d acceleration on the VDI guests?
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 6:18 AM, Giorgio Bersano < giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone, I've been asked to deploy a VDI solution based on our oVirt infrastructure. What we have in production is a 3.6 manager (standalone, not HE) with a 3.5 cluster (CentOS 6) and a 3.6 cluster (CentOS 7), iSCSI storage, fully redundant networking.
What is not clear to me is the client side, especially because we have been asked to implement a thin client solution but I've been almost unable to find suitable devices.
Is there anyone in this list willing to share his/her experience on this topic? Probably my search skill is low but I've only seen references to IGEL. Other brands? There is another strong requirement: our network infrastructure makes use of 802.1x to authenticate client devices and it would be highly advisable to respect that constraint.
TIA, Giorgio. _______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
2016-06-15 12:21 GMT+02:00 Donny Davis <donny@fortnebula.com>:
Do you have a requirement for 3d acceleration on the VDI guests?
On the first deployment no, it is basically for frontend and backend office activity. But we would probably also asked to try it for multimedia activities like casual guests watching internet videos at the local public library. So two different kind of devices, I suppose. Anything to suggest? Thank you, Giorgio.
Il 15/Giu/2016 17:29, "Giorgio Bersano" <giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> ha scritto:
2016-06-15 12:21 GMT+02:00 Donny Davis <donny@fortnebula.com>:
Do you have a requirement for 3d acceleration on the VDI guests?
On the first deployment no, it is basically for frontend and backend office activity. But we would probably also asked to try it for multimedia activities like casual guests watching internet videos at the local public library. So two different kind of devices, I suppose.
Anything to suggest?
Thank you, Giorgio. _______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Why not a nuc, or similar device from other vendors that are emerging? I don't know for the lan security part, but you can find a nuc5cpyh with celeron or nuc5ppyh with pentium respectively at 140 and 170 euros. Both have 6w tdp. You have to add at least memory but with further 20 euros you get 4gb. Disk optional, you can use sdxc or boot from lan.... Just a suggestion for further investigation. I'm currently using a top line nuc6 as an hypervisor without any problem with 3-4 vms, so I think a bottom line nuc can serve optimally as a thin client without its costs. Some of them have also Kensington anti theft that can be a good idea due to their size. Hih, Gianluca
2016-06-15 19:20 GMT+02:00 Gianluca Cecchi <gianluca.cecchi@gmail.com>:
Why not a nuc, or similar device from other vendors that are emerging? I don't know for the lan security part, but you can find a nuc5cpyh with celeron or nuc5ppyh with pentium respectively at 140 and 170 euros. Both have 6w tdp. You have to add at least memory but with further 20 euros you get 4gb. Disk optional, you can use sdxc or boot from lan.... Just a suggestion for further investigation. I'm currently using a top line nuc6 as an hypervisor without any problem with 3-4 vms, so I think a bottom line nuc can serve optimally as a thin client without its costs. Some of them have also Kensington anti theft that can be a good idea due to their size. Hih, Gianluca
Hi Gianluca, we were looking for a prepackaged solution because of the lack of human resources to devote to the project. But if pursuing this research becomes too exhausting we would probably develop a linux solution and in that case the kind of terminal you suggested is interesting indeed. Thanks, Giorgio.
we were looking for a prepackaged solution because of the lack of human resources to devote to the project. But if pursuing this research becomes too exhausting we would probably develop a linux solution and in that case the kind of terminal you suggested is interesting indeed.
Hi, I'm currently trying to find a solution based on linux too. If you're interested in details about my research and tests, I can make you a summary : On most linux thin client distributions, spicec and spicy are intergrated. Sadly, they are not real spice clients. As you can find on the spice documentation "spicec is an obsolete legacy client, and spicy is only a test application". The only real Spice client yet is remote-viewer (part of virt-viewer package), by default it works with VNC, but if you want it also to support spice, you need spice-client-gtk (the name of this package can maybe vary betweem distributions). Before developing a solution, you should maybe check Thinstation, which is a prepackaged solution that make you able to create your own ISO files for client. I made once some 65 MB client images. Yet it support very well RDP, ICA and VNC. The only bad point with his solution is the fact remote-viewer and spice-client gtk aren't integrated yet. But it should be integrated soon (I'll work on that when I'll have time) but you can still compile it. However, it takes time to understand how to deal with Thinstation, but the result is really impressive. There are also some other solutions like Netpoldo, but it's using old debian/ubuntu versions and doesn't seem to be still really alive... (and old remote-viewer versions don't really work properly, or when it does there is no sound, cf debian jessie) I hope this helps. I'll try to post here when I will have a working setup from client side. I guess this is still in the topic as Giorgio was asking for sharing experience :)
On Pá, 2016-06-17 at 10:33 +0200, Alexis HAUSER wrote:
we were looking for a prepackaged solution because of the lack of human resources to devote to the project. But if pursuing this research becomes too exhausting we would probably develop a linux solution and in that case the kind of terminal you suggested is interesting indeed.
Hi, I'm currently trying to find a solution based on linux too. If you're interested in details about my research and tests, I can make you a summary : On most linux thin client distributions, spicec and spicy are intergrated. Sadly, they are not real spice clients. As you can find on the spice documentation "spicec is an obsolete legacy client, and spicy is only a test application". The only real Spice client yet is remote-viewer (part of virt-viewer package), by default it works with VNC, but if you want it also to support spice, you need spice-client-gtk (the name of this package can maybe vary betweem distributions).
Before developing a solution, you should maybe check Thinstation, which is a prepackaged solution that make you able to create your own ISO files for client. I made once some 65 MB client images. Yet it support very well RDP, ICA and VNC. The only bad point with his solution is the fact remote-viewer and spice-client gtk aren't integrated yet.
According to [1], they are. David [1] https://github.com/Thinstation/thinstation/issues/106#issuecomment-228758466
But it should be integrated soon (I'll work on that when I'll have time) but you can still compile it. However, it takes time to understand how to deal with Thinstation, but the result is really impressive.
There are also some other solutions like Netpoldo, but it's using old debian/ubuntu versions and doesn't seem to be still really alive... (and old remote-viewer versions don't really work properly, or when it does there is no sound, cf debian jessie)
I hope this helps. I'll try to post here when I will have a working setup from client side. I guess this is still in the topic as Giorgio was asking for sharing experience :) _______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
On that same note... I would love to deploy several Thin clients around my house using a single Centos Server for my kids to use. Is this still not possible? Do I still have to assign each of my kids a vm? Regards, -- Fernando Fuentes ffuentes@txweather.org http://www.txweather.org On Wed, Jun 15, 2016, at 12:20 PM, Gianluca Cecchi wrote:
Il 15/Giu/2016 17:29, "Giorgio Bersano" <giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> ha scritto:
2016-06-15 12:21 GMT+02:00 Donny Davis <donny@fortnebula.com>:
Do you have a requirement for 3d acceleration on the VDI guests?
On the first deployment no, it is basically for frontend and backend office activity. But we would probably also asked to try it for multimedia activities like casual guests watching internet videos at the local public library. So two different kind of devices, I suppose.
Anything to suggest?
Thank you, Giorgio. _______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Why not a nuc, or similar device from other vendors that are emerging? I don't know for the lan security part, but you can find a nuc5cpyh with celeron or nuc5ppyh with pentium respectively at 140 and 170 euros. Both have 6w tdp. You have to add at least memory but with further 20 euros you get 4gb. Disk optional, you can use sdxc or boot from lan.... Just a suggestion for further investigation. I'm currently using a top line nuc6 as an hypervisor without any problem with 3-4 vms, so I think a bottom line nuc can serve optimally as a thin client without its costs. Some of them have also Kensington anti theft that can be a good idea due to their size. Hih, Gianluca _________________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Fernando, you can use LTSP for your solution. Check them out. www.ltsp.org On Fri, Jun 17, 2016, at 10:50 AM, Fernando Fuentes wrote:
On that same note... I would love to deploy several Thin clients around my house using a single Centos Server for my kids to use. Is this still not possible? Do I still have to assign each of my kids a vm?
Regards,
-- Fernando Fuentes ffuentes@txweather.org http://www.txweather.org
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016, at 12:20 PM, Gianluca Cecchi wrote:
Il 15/Giu/2016 17:29, "Giorgio Bersano" <giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> ha scritto:
2016-06-15 12:21 GMT+02:00 Donny Davis <donny@fortnebula.com>:
Do you have a requirement for 3d acceleration on the VDI guests?
On the first deployment no, it is basically for frontend and backend office activity. But we would probably also asked to try it for multimedia activities like casual guests watching internet videos at the local public library. So two different kind of devices, I suppose.
Anything to suggest?
Thank you, Giorgio. _______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Why not a nuc, or similar device from other vendors that are emerging? I don't know for the lan security part, but you can find a nuc5cpyh with celeron or nuc5ppyh with pentium respectively at 140 and 170 euros. Both have 6w tdp. You have to add at least memory but with further 20 euros you get 4gb. Disk optional, you can use sdxc or boot from lan.... Just a suggestion for further investigation. I'm currently using a top line nuc6 as an hypervisor without any problem with 3-4 vms, so I think a bottom line nuc can serve optimally as a thin client without its costs. Some of them have also Kensington anti theft that can be a good idea due to their size. Hih, Gianluca
_________________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
_________________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Melissa, Very kind of you to revive this as I am still looking for a better solution. I am well aware of LTSP. Just not my cup of tea if you know what I mean ;) Regards, -- Fernando Fuentes ffuentes@txweather.org http://www.txweather.org On Mon, Jun 27, 2016, at 07:54 PM, Melissa Mesler wrote:
Fernando, you can use LTSP for your solution. Check them out. www.ltsp.org
On Fri, Jun 17, 2016, at 10:50 AM, Fernando Fuentes wrote:
On that same note... I would love to deploy several Thin clients around my house using a single Centos Server for my kids to use. Is this still not possible? Do I still have to assign each of my kids a vm?
Regards,
-- Fernando Fuentes ffuentes@txweather.org http://www.txweather.org
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016, at 12:20 PM, Gianluca Cecchi wrote:
Il 15/Giu/2016 17:29, "Giorgio Bersano" <giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> ha scritto:
2016-06-15 12:21 GMT+02:00 Donny Davis <donny@fortnebula.com>:
Do you have a requirement for 3d acceleration on the VDI guests?
On the first deployment no, it is basically for frontend and backend office activity. But we would probably also asked to try it for multimedia activities like casual guests watching internet videos at the local public library. So two different kind of devices, I suppose.
Anything to suggest?
Thank you, Giorgio. _______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Why not a nuc, or similar device from other vendors that are emerging? I don't know for the lan security part, but you can find a nuc5cpyh with celeron or nuc5ppyh with pentium respectively at 140 and 170 euros. Both have 6w tdp. You have to add at least memory but with further 20 euros you get 4gb. Disk optional, you can use sdxc or boot from lan.... Just a suggestion for further investigation. I'm currently using a top line nuc6 as an hypervisor without any problem with 3-4 vms, so I think a bottom line nuc can serve optimally as a thin client without its costs. Some of them have also Kensington anti theft that can be a good idea due to their size. Hih, Gianluca
_________________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
_________________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
_________________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
On that same note... I would love to deploy several Thin clients around my house using a single Centos Server for my kids to use. Is this still not possible? Do I still have to assign each of my kids a vm? Regards, -- Fernando Fuentes ffuentes@txweather.org http://www.txweather.org On Wed, Jun 15, 2016, at 12:20 PM, Gianluca Cecchi wrote:
This depend on what you implement on server side and how you configure it. If you thought about a centos server with ovirt, then you can do as you want : assign each kid a VM, or makes VM they can both access.
Hi everybody, thank you for taking the time to share your experiences. It seems we have now some stuff to digest and to do our tests. I think I'll report back when things will settle down. Best regards, Giorgio.
On 15 Jun 2016, at 12:18, Giorgio Bersano <giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone, I've been asked to deploy a VDI solution based on our oVirt infrastructure. What we have in production is a 3.6 manager (standalone, not HE) with a 3.5 cluster (CentOS 6) and a 3.6 cluster (CentOS 7), iSCSI storage, fully redundant networking.
What is not clear to me is the client side, especially because we have been asked to implement a thin client solution but I've been almost unable to find suitable devices.
if that client can still be a PC, albeit diskless, it’s still easier and probably cheaper than any other special hw.
Is there anyone in this list willing to share his/her experience on this topic? Probably my search skill is low but I've only seen references to IGEL. Other brands?
not that i know of, and even that one had (or still have?) some issues with SPICE performance as it’s not kept up to date
There is another strong requirement: our network infrastructure makes use of 802.1x to authenticate client devices and it would be highly advisable to respect that constraint.
for the VDI connections? I don’t think SPICE supports that, but please bring it up on spice list to make sure. if it would be for oVirt user portal then, I guess with pluggable aaa we can support anything. Ondro?
TIA, Giorgio. _______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
On 06/15/2016 12:26 PM, Michal Skrivanek wrote:
On 15 Jun 2016, at 12:18, Giorgio Bersano <giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone, I've been asked to deploy a VDI solution based on our oVirt infrastructure. What we have in production is a 3.6 manager (standalone, not HE) with a 3.5 cluster (CentOS 6) and a 3.6 cluster (CentOS 7), iSCSI storage, fully redundant networking.
What is not clear to me is the client side, especially because we have been asked to implement a thin client solution but I've been almost unable to find suitable devices.
if that client can still be a PC, albeit diskless, it’s still easier and probably cheaper than any other special hw.
Is there anyone in this list willing to share his/her experience on this topic? Probably my search skill is low but I've only seen references to IGEL. Other brands?
not that i know of, and even that one had (or still have?) some issues with SPICE performance as it’s not kept up to date
There is another strong requirement: our network infrastructure makes use of 802.1x to authenticate client devices and it would be highly advisable to respect that constraint.
for the VDI connections? I don’t think SPICE supports that, but please bring it up on spice list to make sure. if it would be for oVirt user portal then, I guess with pluggable aaa we can support anything. Ondro?
It depends on use case, if apache module which uses radius is ok, then yes it should work. The problem is that we currently support only ldap as authorization backend.
TIA, Giorgio. _______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
2016-06-15 12:56 GMT+02:00 Ondra Machacek <omachace@redhat.com>:
On 06/15/2016 12:26 PM, Michal Skrivanek wrote:
On 15 Jun 2016, at 12:18, Giorgio Bersano <giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone, I've been asked to deploy a VDI solution based on our oVirt infrastructure. What we have in production is a 3.6 manager (standalone, not HE) with a 3.5 cluster (CentOS 6) and a 3.6 cluster (CentOS 7), iSCSI storage, fully redundant networking.
What is not clear to me is the client side, especially because we have been asked to implement a thin client solution but I've been almost unable to find suitable devices.
if that client can still be a PC, albeit diskless, it’s still easier and probably cheaper than any other special hw.
Is there anyone in this list willing to share his/her experience on this topic? Probably my search skill is low but I've only seen references to IGEL. Other brands?
not that i know of, and even that one had (or still have?) some issues with SPICE performance as it’s not kept up to date
There is another strong requirement: our network infrastructure makes use of 802.1x to authenticate client devices and it would be highly advisable to respect that constraint.
for the VDI connections? I don’t think SPICE supports that, but please bring it up on spice list to make sure. if it would be for oVirt user portal then, I guess with pluggable aaa we can support anything. Ondro?
It depends on use case, if apache module which uses radius is ok, then yes it should work. The problem is that we currently support only ldap as authorization backend.
Hi, here I'm speaking of wired network authentication (and nothing more). What we have in place now: network ports are confined in a VLAN only useful to authenticate the PC (windows). When the PC boots it interacts with the radius server (freeradius) using PEAP-MsChapv2. If the PC is registered in the Active Directory and authenticates against it (at machine level, not user level) the switch port is given a VLAN based on attributes stored in the AD and it is enabled to communicate without restrictions. With Thin Client we would like to have something similar but it would be fine even to directly instruct freeradius to enable the port and set the VLAN on the basis of the thin client MAC address. I've just discovered that Wyse ThinOS thin clients (Dell) support 802.1x, I wonder if is compatible with oVirt... Time to search on the spice lists, as Michal suggested. Thanks, Giorgio.
2016-06-15 12:26 GMT+02:00 Michal Skrivanek <michal.skrivanek@redhat.com>:
On 15 Jun 2016, at 12:18, Giorgio Bersano <giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone, I've been asked to deploy a VDI solution based on our oVirt infrastructure. What we have in production is a 3.6 manager (standalone, not HE) with a 3.5 cluster (CentOS 6) and a 3.6 cluster (CentOS 7), iSCSI storage, fully redundant networking.
What is not clear to me is the client side, especially because we have been asked to implement a thin client solution but I've been almost unable to find suitable devices.
if that client can still be a PC, albeit diskless, it’s still easier and probably cheaper than any other special hw.
That's a worrying statement, we were explicitly asked for thin clients (low power, low noise, small form factor).
Is there anyone in this list willing to share his/her experience on this topic? Probably my search skill is low but I've only seen references to IGEL. Other brands?
not that i know of, and even that one had (or still have?) some issues with SPICE performance as it’s not kept up to date
That's even more worrisome. Thanks, Giorgio.
On 15 Jun 2016, at 17:21, Giorgio Bersano <giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> wrote:
2016-06-15 12:26 GMT+02:00 Michal Skrivanek <michal.skrivanek@redhat.com>:
On 15 Jun 2016, at 12:18, Giorgio Bersano <giorgio.bersano@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone, I've been asked to deploy a VDI solution based on our oVirt infrastructure. What we have in production is a 3.6 manager (standalone, not HE) with a 3.5 cluster (CentOS 6) and a 3.6 cluster (CentOS 7), iSCSI storage, fully redundant networking.
What is not clear to me is the client side, especially because we have been asked to implement a thin client solution but I've been almost unable to find suitable devices.
if that client can still be a PC, albeit diskless, it’s still easier and probably cheaper than any other special hw.
That's a worrying statement, we were explicitly asked for thin clients (low power, low noise, small form factor).
well, if it’s a requirement then it is perhaps worth it to look for them a bit more. Though I would personally try to look for something looking as a thin client but being a “normal” desktop, and load it with a cut-down Linux (or Windows, whatever you fancy) and use remote-viewer. Better performance, better control, likely cheaper. I’m sure there are people stuffing a raspberry pi into a plastic box, charging $500, calling it a thin client:)
Is there anyone in this list willing to share his/her experience on this topic? Probably my search skill is low but I've only seen references to IGEL. Other brands?
There are others, but indeed IGEL is probably the most prominent In general the support matrix for oVirt would be the same as for corresponding RHEV version, so check with vendors.
not that i know of, and even that one had (or still have?) some issues with SPICE performance as it’s not kept up to date
That's even more worrisome.
depends what you need, if it’s nothing fancy it may be sufficient enough and provide good experience Thanks, michal
Thanks, Giorgio.
participants (9)
-
Alexis HAUSER -
David Jaša -
Donny Davis -
Fernando Fuentes -
Gianluca Cecchi -
Giorgio Bersano -
Melissa Mesler -
Michal Skrivanek -
Ondra Machacek