ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY THE BENEFITS OF MANAGED DISKLESS CLIENT TECHNOLOGIES IN AN EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT BY GREGG FERRIE An essay submitted in partial fulfilment Of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE in INFORMATION SYSTEMS Athabasca, Alberta July, 2011 © Gregg Ferrie, 2011 DEDICATION To the five pillars of my life: God, my wife, and my three children. Sometimes my focus gets misdirected and without you life would be empty and without purpose, however you always get me back on track. Vikki your steadfast support, love, strength and faith have seen me through the most difficult aspects of my studies. Naomi, Daniel and Joel you have grown into amazing and responsible adults and I couldn't imagine life without you. Thank you all for your love and support. ABSTRACT School districts are under continual pressure to reduce budgets while providing state-of-the- art technology solutions in support of student learning and achievement. Attempting to do this with traditional Windows-based desktops and limited funding is becoming unsustainable and most school districts are falling further behind in support of the curriculum. This essay will provide a comprehensive and critical analysis of how inexpensive, energy-efficient and fully-managed Linux diskless clients, running primarily open-source software are a sustainable and proven solution. As it is antithetical from the current standard, many school districts maintain ageing Windows XP workstations while providing outdated software applications. These desktops are energy inefficient and often poorly managed. They run expensive commercial software applications which provide largely the same functionality as their open-source counterparts. This essay will seek to quantify the educational, operational and financial advantages in conjunction with the significant energy savings possible by transitioning ageing Microsoft Windows-based desktop systems to a fully managed Linux diskless client implementation. i AKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the many people who helped me along this journey including my wife Vikki and family, fellow students, the Computer of Computing and Information Systems staff. Thank you for all the advice and support from Linda Gray, my professors, particularly professor Lin, professor Dron, professor Graf and my essay supervisor professor Huntrods. Most importantly, senior executive staff at School District No. 63 (Saanich) Dr. Keven Elder and Joan Axford. Your support will always be remembered and appreciated. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 Statement of the Purpose. ............................................................................................. 7 Research Problem and Historical Context. ................................................................... 7 Significance................................................................................................................. 15 Assumptions................................................................................................................ 15 Limitations. ................................................................................................................. 16 CHAPTER II – REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE................................................. 17 Historical Context. ...................................................................................................... 19 The Benefits and Challenges of Thin Clients. ............................................................ 32 The Promise of Thin Clients Not Realized. ................................................................ 34 Diskless Clients as Utility Computing........................................................................ 35 CHAPTER III - METHODOLOGY................................................................................... 36 Comparing Thin, Thick and Diskless Clients. ............................................................ 39 Can Diskless Become the New Thin........................................................................... 42 CHAPTER IV - RESULTS................................................................................................. 43 Management Issues of Thick Client Personal Computers. ......................................... 44 Linux Diskless Client Technology Emergence........................................................... 45 Diskless Client Implementation at School District No. 63 (Saanich)......................... 47 Diskless Client Distinctiveness................................................................................... 51 Theory of Operation – Boot Process........................................................................... 54 Theory of Operation – Local Apps. ............................................................................ 62 System Requirements.................................................................................................. 63 iii Energy Conservation and Diskless Clients. ................................................................ 67 Diskless Client Energy Management Functions. ........................................................ 72 Summary. .................................................................................................................... 73 CHAPTER V – CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.................................... 74 Diskless Clients Provide the Preeminent Low Cost Computing Solution.................. 77 Ancillary Advantages of Linux Diskless Client Computing....................................... 80 Challenges to Implementing Diskless Client Technology in Education..................... 82 Conclusion. ................................................................................................................. 84 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................... 85 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Comparison characteristics of thin, diskless and thick clients.................................. 41 Table 2. School District No. 63 - 2009-2012 Technology Plan Budgets ................................ 48 Table 3. Functional comparison between thin, diskless and thick clients .............................. 53 Table 4. Thick client versus diskless client boot process comparison.................................... 57 Table 5. Client energy consumption comparison.................................................................... 69 Table 6. School District No. 63 diskless client energy savings .............................................. 71 Table 7. Typical diskless client open source applications....................................................... 77 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. OS Platform Statistics................................................................................................ 4 Figure 2. Diskless client early boot process............................................................................ 55 Figure 3. PXE boot with sample scripts plus comments ........................................................ 56 Figure 4. Diskless client customized kernel script.................................................................. 58 Figure 5. Diskless client MySQL configuration database ...................................................... 60 Figure 6. Diskless client recommended network configuration ............................................. 64 Figure 8. School District No. 63 energy consumption by percentage .................................... 67 Figure 9. Typical Elementary school diskless desktop snapshot ............................................ 80 vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Public education is expedited in Canada with funding, curricular outcomes, policies and administration provided by the various provincial governments and territories. Although there are some minor differences between the various jurisdictions, the challenges are analogous and include providing equitable resources across a diverse student population to facilitate student learning and assessment. In the province of British Columbia, the prime goals of public education are: to develop intellectual development and critical thinking, encourage and support human and social development while enabling career development opportunities for the future [1]. Although these are lofty goals, the public education system is faced with numerous and significant challenges which include: declining enrolment in many districts, rising costs, salary and benefit increases, policy and regulation changes, inequitable funding models, environmental concerns and student/parent expectations all within the context of a very rapidly changing world. The latter two issues, in particular, are influencing education ministries, policy makers, districts and teachers to rethink the traditional role of the school and how students learning and achievement will be supported. Until recently, education public education has been primarily delivered through traditional instruction methods, where teachers provide the curriculum and lecture from the front of the class. Students are required to listen, utilize rote learning and memorize information from which they are challenged through quizzes, exams and other traditional methods of assessment. Over the past 10 to 15 years there has been a gradual move by ministries of education to offer students greater choice of curriculum via distributed learning: 1 utilizing