“Following is a six-page white paper that summarises the value of pursuing a Multiplied Novell SLED 10 or openSUSE strategy. Modern PCs spend most of the day idle. The Multiplied Linux Desktop strategy allows you to leverage this unused computing power and connect up to 10 full-featured workstations to a SINGLE, shared SLED 10 or openSUSE 10.1 computer. Ideal for Linux computer labs, Linux thin clients, Linux Internet cafés and Linux point-of-sale terminals.”
It’s funny how computing circles around like this.
Basically these become additional monitors/keyboards/mice all attached to a single machine?
Sounds like a glorified mainframe with dumb-terminals
Aren’t most X-server’s built to do this already?
yellowTab toyed around with this idea for Zeta at one point – posting pictures and specs of a computer with 2 VGA/keyboard/mouse ports so that 2 people could use it simultaneously. I don’t think it ever went anywhere.
The Haiku folks actually anticipate this type of machine usage in the future also – and at the beginning of app_server development (the app/window-management system in BeOS/Zeta/Haiku) they structured it such that multiple separate desktops (users) could share a single machine simultaneously… it probably won’t happen until R2/3 of course.
Edited 2006-10-11 21:33
The Haiku folks actually anticipate this type of machine usage in the future also – and at the beginning of app_server development (the app/window-management system in BeOS/Zeta/Haiku) they structured it such that multiple separate desktops (users) could share a single machine simultaneously… it probably won’t happen until R2/3 of course.
Oh, so they are going to recreate X?
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. — Henry Spencer
Aren’t most X-server’s built to do this already?
Yes. But they are a) over network, b) usually the machine is rather expensive and then you still need the monitor/keyboard/mouse.
Does this solution do distributed computing and load balancing? Is it different from a normal X/terminal server-client solution with PXE booting?
You can get a Quantian live-DVD with openMosix and network clients with KDE desktops for free you know…
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html
Read the “system requirements” in that article/advert – it specifies that you’ll need 5 dual-head video cards, 10 usb keyboards and 10 usb mice with usb hubs to handle the extra connections.
This is a single PC with 10 monitors, 10 keyboards, and 10 mice attached…. no networking involved.
I guess all you’re paying for is the software that specifies which mouse and keyboard are used to control which virtual desktop for which video output… not worth the price they’re quoting (although it appears that it’s $13k for 100 users + the cost of SLED)…
The linux terminal services project does it better and its free. This company is just out to sell something. ANd I am curious if a decent PC can handle 10 users at once. 5 maybe, but 10?
PS I just wish openMosix would hurry up and get running in 2.6. I would love to tie my boxes at home together, but I dont want to go back to 2.4 kernel.
Edited 2006-10-12 00:00
*gasp* This COMPANY is out to SELL something!? For shame!
Did anyone pay attention to their example “total cost of ownership” figures (on page 3)?
Apparently, if you use their software you get free electricity and air-conditioning for the extra monitors and video cards, they get a 10:1 compression ratio on the hard disks (so that one hard disk is equal to 10), and the cost of replacing keyboards/mice every few years is significantly reduced.
They’ve also found a way to make a standard desktop machine’s power supply handle the power requirements of 10 video cards and performed some sort of miracle that allows you to plug these video cards into the number of PCI/AGP slots (typically 3 or 4) found on most desktop machine’s motherboards (and avoided “PCI/AGP bus bandwith” bottle necks).
Somehow it’s also much easier for administration. If one user totally stuffs things up it’s much easier to fix than just “re-imaging” their machine, if each user accidentally deletes a file it’s as easy as restoring one file, and if one computer dies due to hardware failure you don’t have 10 users unable to work (or you can fix the hardware 10 times faster).
Let’s be a bit realistic here – some cost savings I can believe, but not the “up to 80%” figures quoted on their first page (at least not comparing “apples to apples”) – especially if you read their hardware requirements on page 4 (there’s not too many people that buy desktop machines with 4 GB of RAM and “high-end” CPUs for office workers). Comparing 10 desktop machines to the price of a server with hot-plug SCSI RAID, redundant power supplies, 4 times as much RAM and twice as much “CPU grunt” might be more appropriate…
Did anyone pay attention to their example “total cost of ownership” figures (on page 3)?
Very good points. I did look at the costs, but glossed over them as I usually consider that fairly useless information anyway. But some of the power-consumption issues are definitely a challenge. I’m guessing that they’re spec’ing this out as some monstrous server-grade machine that has a whole bunch of PCI-X slots and monster power supplies.
I have to agree with you here.
They also don’t mention that often times you can get the monitor/keyboard/mouse thrown in as a package deal with even a $300 Dell PC but their solution would require buying them seperately. After cables, graphics cards, and 1 monster server class system I’d not hold my breath on the savings being worth it.
Also, ideas like this didn’t really take off back when PC’s were expensive, these days I would expect even less demand for it.
Apparently, if you use their software you get free electricity and air-conditioning for the extra monitors and video cards, they get a 10:1 compression ratio on the hard disks (so that one hard disk is equal to 10), and the cost of replacing keyboards/mice every few years is significantly reduced.
What extra monitors? The breakdown is comparing 10 Windows computers with 10 SLED computers and one SLED Multiplied system that runs one computer with 10 terminals. Did you even consider that there would be 9 less computers running and that most likey the video cards used are very low power/heat. This would be an overall savings. In addition the hard drive price would be negligible. The target audience for these setups are not people who demand terabytes of storage space.
They’ve also found a way to make a standard desktop machine’s power supply handle the power requirements of 10 video cards and performed some sort of miracle that allows you to plug these video cards into the number of PCI/AGP slots (typically 3 or 4) found on most desktop machine’s motherboards (and avoided “PCI/AGP bus bandwith” bottle necks).
Network latencies are much higher than PCI/AGP latencies and would probably perform better than typical thin client solutions.
Somehow it’s also much easier for administration. If one user totally stuffs things up it’s much easier to fix than just “re-imaging” their machine, if each user accidentally deletes a file it’s as easy as restoring one file, and if one computer dies due to hardware failure you don’t have 10 users unable to work (or you can fix the hardware 10 times faster).
The target audiences for SLED Multiplier are internet cafes and POS terminals and the like. You could easily reimage machines like that when needed. The only thing I agree with you on is the single point of failure SLED Multiplier creates.
Let’s be a bit realistic here – some cost savings I can believe, but not the “up to 80%” figures quoted on their first page (at least not comparing “apples to apples”) – especially if you read their hardware requirements on page 4 (there’s not too many people that buy desktop machines with 4 GB of RAM and “high-end” CPUs for office workers). Comparing 10 desktop machines to the price of a server with hot-plug SCSI RAID, redundant power supplies, 4 times as much RAM and twice as much “CPU grunt” might be more appropriate…
For what these systems are designed for one high end desktop would suffice which is much less expensive than 10 mid range office computers.
Meanwhile with ONE workstation/server goes down and all of the people are sitting on their hands. This whole concept is failed for any type of Enterprise roll out.
This is the same old rehash that gets recooked every year with no sales. This belongs in the broom closet with Win-Terms…
“*gasp* This COMPANY is out to SELL something!? For shame!”
True. Most companies are known to give their stuff away for free… now if only I could get the local Apple shop to donate me a Macbook… :p
Reminds me of IBM’s Workspace on Demand for OS/2. Centralized server with thin clients who boot their OS and retreive their files and settings from a centralized server. Unlike Mainframes, all computing is done at the desktop and not at the central server.
Jim