[Bug 706310] Need EPEL-6 branches for LTSP

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https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=706310



--- Comment #12 from Andrew Riell <ariell@xxxxxxxxxx> ---
Here are LANL's (SFDC acct: 129791) comments:

Candidate Solution: the Linux Terminal Server Project, LTSP.
http://www.ltsp.org/

Definitions:
Terminal Services - A single system image, usually running directly on the
hardware, that is scaled to support 10-50 different users simultaneously. This
is a computing model that dates back to serial protocol green screen terminals
like the VT100.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, VDI - Desktop images that are provided by
virtualization technology. The solution requires a virtualization farm and a
"cloud director" to connect clients to images. VMWare view is a leading
technology in this space.

Business Case:

Los Alamos National Laboratory, and many other Federal customers (DOE, DOD,
NSA, etc) have a critical need for a Zero Client, Terminal Services solution
for Linux computing. In our secure environments we have orders to use only
clients with zero local storage. This is a measure intended to help prevent the
theft of sensitive data.This eliminates from consideration several existing
solutions that rely on lightweight embedded versions of operating systems in
"thin" clients.

Our go-to technology in this space for the past 5 years has been the Sun Ray.
Earlier this year Oracle decided to terminate the Sun Ray product (hardware and
software), leaving a significant capability gap unfilled.

Terminal services as a solution space has been somewhat neglected in favor of
"sexier" solutions like virtualization based VDI. However for many workloads
Terminal services is superior to VDI as the I/O and Memory sharing is more
efficient within a single image than it is between system images in VDI. There
is also a reduced per/user workload as system daemons (loggers, etc) are not
replicated per-session in Terminal Services as they are in a VDI solution.

In addition to our need to have processing and storage happen in one place
while display happens in another, terminal services also meets a number of
other solution spaces: Low cost activity tracking stations or point of sale
systems. Terminal services has a strong presence in Education world wide as it
is a very cost efficient way to create a computing based classroom environment.

In fact, packaged and enhanced properly, the underpinnings of Terminal Services
(booting thin clients over a network), could be used to support a number of
different workloads that utilize stateless nodes; HPC, open stack compute
systems, etc.

In short: This is a make or break capability for LANL that impacts
approximately 1500 people at this institution alone. We need a solid solution
in this space and we will change distributions over this functionality if
needed. This also represents an opportunity for Red Hat to grow market share
and develop a foundation package that can be used to enable several high value
use cases.

Intended Workloads: Support software developers, computer scientists,
physicists and engineers. Tasks ranging from text editing & e-mail all the way
up to CAD and visualization.

Requirements:
Terminal Services style Zero Client solution.
Terminal Services (multiple users, one system image) not VDI (one system image
per user virtualized).
Secure communications channel.
No OS Image required on Client Device (no embedded OS).
Use of standard client hardware (multiple vendors)
1 or more clients capable of being Tempest certified.
Maintenance of client root integrated into maintenance of boot server (e.g. yum
update client-root, not chroot /foo/clients, script to setup environment, yum
update, bar.sh which fixes a bunch of stuff after the update, exit chroot)
Packaged solution (vendor supported, easy install. Not custom crafted twitchy
configuration)
Support for HSPD-12/CAC authentication.
Support for 32 and 64bit applications.

Desired Features:
"Follow me" sessions. (Login with smart card, pull card w/o logging out, go to
2nd station, put card in, login, get session in state that it was on station
1).
High performance graphics with support for 2 30 inch displays at
2560X1600@60Hz.
Client support for common multimedia technologies (sound and video work at
client, Youtube etc. works at client.)
Client support for rich web technologies (Java, Flash, Javascript, HTML5
including video).
Support for session selection menu (e.g. power on thin client, Get screen that
says do you want a session on this RHEL server, that RHEL server or this other
Windows server)
Session shadow support tool (user calls in with problem, tech 'shadows' user
session, sees what user sees and can interact with desktop. Requires user to
acknowledge and allow connection).

Implications:
N.B. This is a workstation solution and it carries with it the implicit
assumption that Red Hat will re-commit to providing a strong workstation
environment including providing a broad package selection and keeping it
updated.

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