Green computing, green IT or ICT Sustainability,
refers to environmentally sustainable computing or IT. In the article
Harnessing Green IT: Principles and Practices, San Murugesan defines the field
of green computing as "the study and practice of designing, manufacturing,
using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated subsystems—such as
monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systems
— efficiently and effectively with minimal or no impact on the
environment."The goals of green computing are similar to green chemistry;
reduce the use of hazardous materials, maximize energy efficiency during the
product's lifetime, and promote the recyclability or biodegradability of
defunct products and factory waste. Research continues into key areas such as
making the use of computers as energy-efficient as possible, and designing
algorithms and systems for efficiency-related computer technologies.
Green computing is the environmentally responsible use
of computers and related resources. Such practices include the implementation
of energy-efficient central processing units (CPUs), servers and peripherals as
well as reduced resource consumption and proper disposal of electronic waste
(e-waste). One of the earliest initiatives toward green computing in the United
States was the voluntary labeling program known as Energy Star. It was
conceived by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1992 to promote
energy efficiency in hardware of all kinds. The Energy Star label became a
common sight, especially in notebook computers and displays. Similar programs
have been adopted in Europe and Asia.
What is a thin client ?
A thin client (sometimes also called a lean or slim
client) is a computer or a computer program which depends heavily on some other
computer (its server) to fulfill its traditional computational roles. This
stands in contrast to the traditional fat client, a computer designed to take
on these roles by itself. The exact roles assumed by the server may vary, from
providing data persistence (for example, for diskless nodes) to actual
information processing on the client's behalf.
Thin clients occur as components of a broader computer
infrastructure, where many clients share their computations with the same
server. As such, thin client infrastructures can be viewed as the amortization
of some computing service across several user-interfaces. This is desirable in
contexts where individual fat clients have much more functionality or power
than the infrastructure either requires or uses. This can be contrasted, for
example, with grid computing.
Thin-client computing is also a way of easily
maintaining computational services at a reduced total cost of ownership.
The most common type of modern thin client is a low-end computer terminal which concentrates solely on providing a
Thin clients have their roots in multi-user systems,
traditionally mainframes accessed by some sort of terminal computer. As
computer graphics matured, these terminals transitioned from providing a
command-line interface to a full graphical user interface, as is common on
modern thin clients. The prototypical multiuser environment along these lines,
UNIX, began to support fully graphical X terminals, i.e., devices running X
server software, from about 1984. X terminals remained relatively popular even
after the arrival of other thin clients in the mid-late 1990s. Modern UNIX
derivatives like BSD and GNU/Linux continue the tradition of the multi-user,
remote display/input session. Typically, X server software is not made
available on thin clients; although no technical reason for this exclusion
would prevent it.
Windows NT became capable of multi-user operations
primarily through the efforts of Citrix
Systems , which repackaged NT 3.5.1 as the multi-user
operating system Win Frame in 1995. Microsoft licensed this technology back
from Citrix and implemented it into Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition, under a project
codenamed "Hydra". Windows NT then became the basis of Windows 2000
and Windows XP. As of 2011 Microsoft Windows systems support graphical
terminals via the Remote Desktop Services component.
The term thin client was coined in 1993 by Tim Negris,
VP of Server Marketing at Oracle Corp., while working with company founder
Larry Ellison on the launch of Oracle 7. At the time, Oracle wished to
differentiate their server-oriented software from Microsoft's desktop-oriented
products. Ellison subsequently popularized Negris's buzzword with frequent use
in his speeches and interviews about Oracle products. Size comparison -
traditional Desktop PC vs. Clientron U700
Client Simplicity:
Since the clients are made from low-cost hardware with
few moving parts, they can operate in more hostile environments than
conventional computers. However, they inevitably need a network connection to
their server, which must be isolated from such hostile environments. Since thin
clients are cheap, they offer a low risk of theft in general, and are easy to
replace if stolen or broken. Since they do not have any complicated boot
images, the problem of boot image control is centralized to the server.
On the other hand, to achieve this simplicity, thin
clients sometimes lag behind thick clients (PC Desktops )
in terms of extensibility. For example, if a local software utility or set of
device drivers are needed in order to support a locally attached peripheral
device (e.g. printer, scanner, biometric security device), the thin client
operating system may lack the resources needed to fully integrate the needed
dependencies. Modern thin clients attempt to address this limitation via port
mapping or USB redirection software. However, these methods cannot address all
use case scenarios for the vast number of peripheral types being put to use
today.
Thin Clients has many advantages, so different people
define thin clients in different way basing one of its advantage. Below are the
few common definitions & sentences people often use to define thin client.
Simply, Thin Client is nothing but a computer, but with very less configuration
(specifications /capacity / power), still users can able to run all the latest
Operating Systems and Applications (software), with the help of SERVER Computer
which is connected to it through LAN Means.
In Thin Clients you need not to
install any OS or Applications, you have to install Only in SERVER where all
thin clients are connected to it, all the OS and Applications will run on
server and results are displayed in Thin Clients (user computers) Several users
can run the same program simultaneously, but the program only needs to be
loaded once with a central server. In Traditional PC, We have to Install OS and
Applications Locally and use its Local Resources (CPU, Ram, HDD) for its
Processing and Storing, where as in Thin Client you need not install any OS or
Applications in Thin Client, but you can access OS and Applications from
SERVER.
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