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I'm currently planning an install for a computer lab and I had an idea that I'm not too sure will work...

The computer lab is roughly 15' x 15', with a full-size server rack in the corner. My goal is to place all of the computer towers in the rack. Is there any technology that makes it possible to do this, having the workstations be up to 20' away from the rack?

Putting the towers in the rack is not the concern, but wiring the monitors, keyboard and mouse to the towers is.

Any suggestions? Sorry, I don't really know how to explain it any better... If there are questions, I will do my best to clarify them. Thanks in advance.

matalaweb
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  • Or KVM over IP. – ETL Mar 11 '14 at 23:14
  • @ETL KVM-over-IP still requires something to run the KVM viewer software (usually a PC) – voretaq7 Mar 13 '14 at 19:16
  • Maybe you might want to consider a terminal server and using terminal PC's instead of full PC's... it's appropriate in some situations not all. Otherwise KVM-over-IP is one other option suggsted – hookenz Mar 13 '14 at 22:05

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This would seem to be a solid use case for VDI. Both VMWare View and Citrix XenDesktop are pretty well known and stable products for this sort of thing. At the users' desks, they'd need a "Zero Client" or a "Thin Client" to actually do the remote desktop, but those can be bolted to the back of the monitor, and set up as essentially a kiosk that take some effort to actually break. One other advantage of VDI is that you can pretty easily set up a golden image, and simply delete the VMs that a particular class uses, and spawn new ones for the next class.

thatmorrowguy
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If I understand what you're getting at, you want to put all the actual computers in a locked cabinet, and leave only a keyboard, mouse, and monitor at each "station" in the lab.

That's just not going to happen with any reasonable technology (you could possibly do it with REALLY LONG CABLES, but that's decidedly unreasonable). Every other solution (KVM-over-IP, remote desktop, etc.) will require some kind of computer at each station to run the viewer software, at which point you may as well put the PC there in the first place.
(Frankly if your users are too irresponsible to have a PC near them they're probably too irresponsible to have the keyboard/mouse/monitor anyway.)

TL;DR: Racks are for rack-mount servers, desktop PCs belong on (or under) a desk. Put the desktop PCs at the workstations where they belong.

voretaq7
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