14 DAY TRIAL // Leadtek is apparently taking the cloud computing media wave seriously and the company is actually launching a product that’s quite a bit outside its traditional area of expertise. The new system will let the user enjoy the power of a multi-processor server.
The company’s new WinFast TC200 Series thin client will enable the admin offer the workers a noise-free environment while problems like overheating and power consumption will become a thing of the past.
The Leadtek WinFast TC200 thin client system will communicate with a server running VMWare, Citrix, Linux or Microsoft based virtual machines by a simple LAN cable, while the user will feel like having a classical desktop all to himself.
The Leadtek WinFast TC200 thin client system is powered by Texas Instruments’ DM8148 SoC running at 1 GHz and using 1 GB of DDR3 memory along with 2 GB of flash memory.
It is able to power a dual-display setup with WUXGA resolution on each screen.
Deploying a fleet of such systems will help the admin have a single system maintenance point, the servers room, but the network must work perfectly because if the network fails, all workers will stay idle and money will be lost.
Therefore, considerably more investments must be made in network redundancy and transfer speed.
On the other hand, the system is considerably more efficient as a quad socket server running six such virtual machines will offer all its performance to the worker needing it while others are idling, browsing the internet or writing a text document such as an email.
The IT architect must carefully balance the higher cost of the network hardware and the energy and performance efficiency that a centralized processing system brings.
Also the network maintenance must be balanced against the system maintenance and the redundancy required by exposing all the processing and storage capabilities to the perils of a single location.
That is, if half of the building burns, maybe half of the systems will still be in working order. But if several buildings access the same server room that suffers a fire or an earth quake or any kind of disability incident, all those buildings and the employees inside will stay idle.
