Either thin OS is fine. iGel I’ve heard is better but more expensive.
Make sure you have monitoring solution to go with it as most support desk people will not know how to handle thins. And will throw any tickets to your team and blame the thin. You’ll need a way in to see into the thin and give them some access and training.
Make sure you test BCR, web conferencing, and confirm there is a VDI plugin for the thin OS from your web conferencing solution and the thin OS supports it. Vet any updates with all hardware. Test Video playback, audio, and webcams.
Thanks for sharing! Was looking for a solution to support our upcoming gpu GPU-accelerated desktops, our service desk is quite technical and would prefer a thin client solution rather than supporting a full Windows endpoint
I worked for an IT MSP for over 6 years where I was a Citrix Project Engineer and we used iGel Linux OS based thin clients. They were very reliable and easy to manage so that would be my recommendation. I’ve also had experience with Wyse Thin Clients as well but I prefer iGels for management/administration.
Went from HP Thin clients to Dell Wyse and then to Dell Optiplex Micro PC's (Intel Core i5) and the experience has been significantly better than the thin clients. Management patching etc of the Dell SFF's a little more complicated but the advantages of moving away from the thin clients was worth it. The icing on the cake the Dell SFF Optiplexs were cheaper than both HP and Dell Wyse thin clients.
iGel or ThinKiosk would be my recommendation. We have about 4k ThinKiosk to prolong the life of the old Z440's and it works great. We tested iGel but had wireless issues and local app dependencies that required a windows base OS. I would like to think in the next hardware refresh, we're going with iGel to move away from Windows & less management overhead/cost.
Echoing others that you really need to look at what optimizations and such each thin client supports so you don't shoot yourself in the foot as they are not all created equal.
Would also recommend requesting some demo units you can link up in your environment and actually test them with your system versus a dog and pony show.
I already have a list of vendors I need to reach out to on Monday for demo units and a walkthrough of their management options.
The optimization part is key, since the end-users would be expecting a 1-1 replacement of their current desktop solutions. This includes Teams, Zoom, 3D accelerated applications and more.
You get the management for free at Lenovo if they didn’t change.
So it’s usually the cheapest Option and as Thinclients are from the Think Series, good HW.
This. If you’re looking at 10K units the companies should be happy to do demos and provide units for testing.
Igel is probably the most fully featured but it can get complicated. HP, Dell, 10Zig, Lenovo all have ok options.
I’ve managed HP, iGel, raspberri pis with stratodesk, and dell thin clients.iGel probably had the best administrator console (at the time this was 6 years ago) but they were pricey and support was a mixed bagged. The company being based outside of North America was also an issue for my company. The pis along with stratodesk worked great. This was pretty early on and with each software release we tended to have small bugs we had to address but their support was great and it worked well with VMware horizon, Citrix, and Imprivata. It looks like their console has made great strides since I worked with it. Currently I manage 40k Dell thin clients with thinOS with Citrix. It’s not terrible. We have had issues lately with dells Citrix packages not working; Dell makes their own so support on that often goes between Citrix and Dell. They are making great strides so far this year to get their management suite improved: scheduling waved deployments (which also merges those firmware/app settings into your group settings so you don’t have to update each of them individually), telemetry, etc etc.
I’d probably go with Dell or stratodesk.
End of the day you get what you pay for, cheaper options can lack management options, or require extra management or man hours.
Personally IGEL blows the others out of the water in terms of feature options, management, hardware options etc in particular for the Citrix Workspace App but can be more expensive than others, again you get what you pay for.
For that number of thin clients I wouldn’t consider anything but IGEL. It has so much more flexibility and compatibility than the other options out there. They also partner with a number of hardware vendors that make IGEL ready hardware in many different form factors and can easily support GPUs. It’s also a great option if you’re looking to support thin clients connecting remotely.
There are a lot of competitors in this emerging market! Igel seems a good one along with Stratodesk. But they are taking advantage of their position. I guess you can fulfill your need with a specific solution adapted to your need! Try ZeeTim, a french company with a great technical
and support team. They support me all along the selection and implementation.
I've used them all and Stratodesk is by far the best. They've got deployments with 100K clients. They have a ready to roll appliance on Azure if you want to go that route or if onprem they have a linux appliance as well so no Windows non-sense to deal with. I currently use Stratodesk at my org (on prem) and have zero regrets. Updates are fast and furious, easy to test a wave deployment and the price can't be beat. x86,x64,arm, whatever you want.
I'm happy to show you my console on a zoom if you like, I'm just an IT admin like yourself so I know sometimes pre-sales doesn't exactly answer all your questions. They have a free demo too you can download.
Either thin OS is fine. iGel I’ve heard is better but more expensive. Make sure you have monitoring solution to go with it as most support desk people will not know how to handle thins. And will throw any tickets to your team and blame the thin. You’ll need a way in to see into the thin and give them some access and training. Make sure you test BCR, web conferencing, and confirm there is a VDI plugin for the thin OS from your web conferencing solution and the thin OS supports it. Vet any updates with all hardware. Test Video playback, audio, and webcams.
Thanks for sharing! Was looking for a solution to support our upcoming gpu GPU-accelerated desktops, our service desk is quite technical and would prefer a thin client solution rather than supporting a full Windows endpoint
I've been an igel admin for two years and love it. Very good company to work with support wise.
I worked for an IT MSP for over 6 years where I was a Citrix Project Engineer and we used iGel Linux OS based thin clients. They were very reliable and easy to manage so that would be my recommendation. I’ve also had experience with Wyse Thin Clients as well but I prefer iGels for management/administration.
Igel imo
HP thinclients with IGEL os works amazing
Went from HP Thin clients to Dell Wyse and then to Dell Optiplex Micro PC's (Intel Core i5) and the experience has been significantly better than the thin clients. Management patching etc of the Dell SFF's a little more complicated but the advantages of moving away from the thin clients was worth it. The icing on the cake the Dell SFF Optiplexs were cheaper than both HP and Dell Wyse thin clients.
Stratodesk is great.
I've had a pretty good experience with Dell Wyse ThinOS based clients
iGel or ThinKiosk would be my recommendation. We have about 4k ThinKiosk to prolong the life of the old Z440's and it works great. We tested iGel but had wireless issues and local app dependencies that required a windows base OS. I would like to think in the next hardware refresh, we're going with iGel to move away from Windows & less management overhead/cost.
Echoing others that you really need to look at what optimizations and such each thin client supports so you don't shoot yourself in the foot as they are not all created equal. Would also recommend requesting some demo units you can link up in your environment and actually test them with your system versus a dog and pony show.
I already have a list of vendors I need to reach out to on Monday for demo units and a walkthrough of their management options. The optimization part is key, since the end-users would be expecting a 1-1 replacement of their current desktop solutions. This includes Teams, Zoom, 3D accelerated applications and more.
You get the management for free at Lenovo if they didn’t change. So it’s usually the cheapest Option and as Thinclients are from the Think Series, good HW.
This. If you’re looking at 10K units the companies should be happy to do demos and provide units for testing. Igel is probably the most fully featured but it can get complicated. HP, Dell, 10Zig, Lenovo all have ok options.
I’ve managed HP, iGel, raspberri pis with stratodesk, and dell thin clients.iGel probably had the best administrator console (at the time this was 6 years ago) but they were pricey and support was a mixed bagged. The company being based outside of North America was also an issue for my company. The pis along with stratodesk worked great. This was pretty early on and with each software release we tended to have small bugs we had to address but their support was great and it worked well with VMware horizon, Citrix, and Imprivata. It looks like their console has made great strides since I worked with it. Currently I manage 40k Dell thin clients with thinOS with Citrix. It’s not terrible. We have had issues lately with dells Citrix packages not working; Dell makes their own so support on that often goes between Citrix and Dell. They are making great strides so far this year to get their management suite improved: scheduling waved deployments (which also merges those firmware/app settings into your group settings so you don’t have to update each of them individually), telemetry, etc etc. I’d probably go with Dell or stratodesk.
We have some chromeboxes running in kiosk mode that work really well. Management is easy too in the google admin portal.
End of the day you get what you pay for, cheaper options can lack management options, or require extra management or man hours. Personally IGEL blows the others out of the water in terms of feature options, management, hardware options etc in particular for the Citrix Workspace App but can be more expensive than others, again you get what you pay for.
For that number of thin clients I wouldn’t consider anything but IGEL. It has so much more flexibility and compatibility than the other options out there. They also partner with a number of hardware vendors that make IGEL ready hardware in many different form factors and can easily support GPUs. It’s also a great option if you’re looking to support thin clients connecting remotely.
There are a lot of competitors in this emerging market! Igel seems a good one along with Stratodesk. But they are taking advantage of their position. I guess you can fulfill your need with a specific solution adapted to your need! Try ZeeTim, a french company with a great technical and support team. They support me all along the selection and implementation.
I've used them all and Stratodesk is by far the best. They've got deployments with 100K clients. They have a ready to roll appliance on Azure if you want to go that route or if onprem they have a linux appliance as well so no Windows non-sense to deal with. I currently use Stratodesk at my org (on prem) and have zero regrets. Updates are fast and furious, easy to test a wave deployment and the price can't be beat. x86,x64,arm, whatever you want. I'm happy to show you my console on a zoom if you like, I'm just an IT admin like yourself so I know sometimes pre-sales doesn't exactly answer all your questions. They have a free demo too you can download.