How to Boot a Thin Client Network
Thanks to the power and the affordability of Internet access, many individuals and organizations have been able to leverage the Internet instead of constantly upgrading their hardware to keep up with computing trends or to process increasingly large amounts of data. This practice is sometimes called network computing or thin client computing; "thin client" refers to the low amount of memory required on the user's physical system to control the network. Booting your own thin client network is easier than you might think if you take advantage of the power and flexibility offered by virtual servers.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Scan your PC for malware. Even if you have an up-to-date malware prevention system on your computer, you should have that tool do a full scan before booting you network, since there is a risk that malware from your system could spread to the entire network. If you do not have one of these tools installed on your machine, McAfee, Norton and Vipre are well respected applications in the malware prevention and detection industry.
-
2
Lease a virtual server from the vendor of your choice; popular vendors include Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and Blue Light Host (see Resources). Virtual servers can be configured to have as much or as little memory as you need and are able to scale your server, either up or down, as required. Shop around before settling on a host, since they tend to have different pricing schemes; some are pay-for-use but others come at a flat monthly fee. Most virtual server providers offer you the choice between either running various versions of Linux or Windows Server as your server's operating system.
-
-
3
Configure your virtual server. Once you sign up for one of the services, you will be brought to the configuration page in your web browser. You will be asked to select what operating system and how much memory and storage space you want the server to have. The system will then generate a secure password for your server's root (on Linux) or administrator (on Windows Server) account. This information along with the IP address of your server will then be sent to the email address that you created the customer account with.
-
4
Log in to your virtual server from your thin client. If you are running either Linux or Mac OS X, this is done by opening your terminal application and entering the following command: ssh root@Your-server's-IP-address. "Your-server's-IP-address" is just a stand-in for your server's actual IP address. If you are using a Windows PC, then the same command will work, but you are going to have to download a terminal application to run it in. Cygwin is the standard Unix terminal for Windows and is freely available on the Internet (see Resources). Once you have logged in to your virtual server your network is booted and you can begin utilizing it.
-
1
References
Resources
- Photo Credit stock illustration of computer server icon image by Ruslana Stovner from Fotolia.com
