[Info-vax] VMware

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/10/19 5:17 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> What is a GUI dumb terminal?

It is a dumb terminal, as in there is (effectively) no local processing 
/ networking / I/O.  Everything is done on a remote system.  The only 
thing that is done locally is provide a display, receive input from 
keyboard and mouse, connect some local peripherals (think USB flash 
drive), and optionally play sound locally.

A GUI dumb terminal is a graphic counterpart of a VT100.  (Feel free to 
pick a different VT model if you prefer.)

> Most of the ones I see are rather cheap desktop PCs

It is common to re-purpose old PCs as (GUI) dumb terminals.  It doesn't 
take much to run an RDP client / Citrix client / X11 ""client ("server" 
in X11 parlance), etc.

It is also quite possible to use a $40 Raspberry Pi, or comparable, as a 
(GUI) dumb terminal.

> using network storage.

What does "network storage" mean in this context?  Is it NAS (SMB / NFS 
/ NCP / etc.) or SAN (FC / iSCSI / etc.)?

I'm not accustom to (GUI) dumb terminals utilizing any of these options.

> The only advantage I might see running such in VMs is the ability to 
> spin up a new VM with the OS and apps ready to go.  Still gonna need 
> the "GUI dumb terminal".

Yes, you still need the (GUI) dumb terminal.

But this can be re-purposed old computers, or it can be really 
inexpensive single board computers.

> Now, if the desktop user is doing something very CPU intensive, perhaps 
> the VM would give less performance?

On the contrary, I expect that the VM would give better performance.

Most desktops, particularly the ones being re-purposed, are CPU and / or 
memory and / or disk bound.  Conversely, the VMware hosts are a MASSIVE 
amount of memory and extremely fast network and storage.

As such, it's quite likely that the task will run faster and better in a 
VDI type environment than on a fat client.

> Some apps can be very CPU and video intensive.

Yes.

I expect that one of the most video intensive is Google's new Stadia 
product which runs games in the cloud and sends the video down to the 
client.

Yes, VDI has gotten good enough that high demand graphic games can be 
run in the cloud.

> Of course, none of this matters.  If the potential customers tell Clair 
> they want to run VMS in VMs,  The smart money is to give the customer 
> what he wants, and, collect lots of support money.

Sure.

> All I'll say about that is that isn't how I learned to design apps.

I completely agree.  Unfortunately, that's not been what I've 
experienced over the last 20 years.

Sadly, the idea of having applications play well with other apps has 
been the exception instead of the norm for the last 15+ years.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die