HMI virtualization / thin client - Details

This topic has been discussed before in this thread.

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?p=691496

Even though I had worked with Citrix in the old (late 90s) days for the office folks. I haven't touched it beside workstation level VM stuff since then. As some of our HMI server are starting to reach EOL I'm looking for better solutions. The above thread lacks the details I'm looking for so I thought you folks can help me out with some basic questions.

• Comparing the main contender, Vmware Esxi vs MSFT Hyper-V, which one seems better for HMI server

• For VM, what OS do you typical uses for Windows? Workstation OS like Win10 or Server? Yes, this is assuming that Windows OS is needed for HMI

• Do one need something like thinmanager for 1 or 2 thin-client off a server?

• Specifically for MSFT Server host, how does license work? Can I just buy "client" license and work as VM if just remote desktop into server

Thanks for any helping clarifying my understandings.

I use VMware ESXi.

I run a combination of Windows 7/10 and Server 2016.

I have Thinmanager since it makes it nice for deploying although its sometimes not the easiest thing to do.

You can buy licenses for RDP and you can install applications on there. What you typically can't do with RDP is limit where someone goes. Thats way thinmanager is nice.

One place I worked went from Vmware esx to Cisco Unified Computing System some time ago.

With UCS we could spin up as many windows servers as we needed without having to pay for a new windows server license every time. It's not my area of expertise, just wanted to toss it out there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Unified_Computing_System

I started migrating my old XP clients to thin clients in iFix (GE was giving the free upgrade and we went with it to satisfy IT and Mr. HSE).



It works nicely and was easy to set up, GE sells the package for thin clients directly so you don't have to do a lot of the IT configuration, but it's iFix... and in version 5.5 of the Thin Client server, GE thought that having environment protection didn't matter so they skipped that bit and shrugged their shoulders.

Hyper V has improved a lot in the last few years plus it's free but I still lean to ESXI myself because the tools and management are a little more polished IMHO.

You can use a desktop OS or Server OS for the Clients if your HMI software supports both. If either one will work it would come down to your windows licensing costs which is very company specific, and I would encourage you to work with your IT team and a Microsoft Licensing sales rep to help you get the best setup for your budget. Microsoft licensing is a rats nest mess, so it's best to have someone with experience right by your side to help you navigate it IMHO.

Thinmanager is super nice kit but for only two clients and one server, it may a bit much and may be a tough sell IMHO.

Hey benderunit, welcome to the forum. So the RDP license is the so called CAL (Client Access License), correct? I guess my confusion is that do I need a 2nd Server 2016 license if I run another instance of server as VM or will the additional CAL suffice?

Scott, UCS seems like a VM “supervisor” like VCenter? For our typical plants, something like that is probably not needed but thanks for pointing that out.

Cardosocea, we do have some iFix but we don’t have service agreement. They did a presentation on server virtualization and how great it is but didn’t went into detail on implementation. I’ll probably call the local rep up.

Licensing is an issue here even though our IT has enterprise licensing agreement but the typical cultural divide is proving to be almost impossible to overcome. At this point I’m thinking of going to get our own enterprise agreement.

Phil, it seems I’m coming down to ESXI vs Hyper-V. I found this discussion that went into some technical detail:

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/561677

Most IT folks are more interested in managing a big data-center and that’s not the type of application we control folks deal with. Some the discussion in that thread raise a bit of concern for ESXI the type of setup we typically uses.
Thanks all, I got a lot more reading to do.