A small ACP Thin Client installation of 10 or fewer Thin Clients will usually have a single Windows Terminal Server. All of the Thin Clients will connect to that server, and ACP's ThinManager will be installed there as well.
The next step a customer may take is to use ACP's Failover capability to provide a backup Terminal Server. Either the backup server will sit idle to be used in the event of problems with the primary, or (the better solution) half of the Thin Clients will be moved to the backup server. Each Thin Client will monitor the health of its particular server, and switch to the other one if something goes wrong.
When an ACP Enabled Thin Client boots, it locates a computer with ThinManager, receives its ThinManager license, Terminal Operating System (or TOPS), and its configuration. A vital piece of the configuration is the identification of the Microsoft Terminal Server that will serve as its host. Once it has this, it locates the correct Terminal Server on the network, connects, and starts (or resumes) a session.
For larger installations, ThinManager is usually not installed on any of the Terminal Servers, but instead put on another computer on the network. This is especially true for ACP's new unlimited license versions (ThinManager Enterprise).
Before ThinManager 2.5, the selection of a Terminal Server was fixed to some extent. If the first listed server was available, the client would connect. This forced the system administrator to make sure that he had carefully planned the order of Terminal Servers in each Thin Client's list.
With large systems it is not possible to effectively use a pool of Terminal Servers without allowing the client some ability to find an under-utilized server. Thin Clients are constantly coming online, and spreading the load around is vital.
Smart Session allows the administrator to put Terminal Servers into a logical group, and to identify that group with a name. Each group can contain any number of servers, and servers can be in multiple groups. Once added to the group, a server becomes part of a team, and any Thin Client connecting to that group and using Smart Session will simply pick the most available server in the group.
The parameters for server selection are based on the needs of the particular installation. Three factors (Server CPU load, available memory and number of connected Thin Clients) can all play a part in selection of the actual server in the group. Each parameter can be varied in a number of ways, usually depending on the application.
Smart Session effectively abstracts the actual Terminal Server, allowing for the best utilization of expensive server hardware by balancing the load among all of the servers.
For more information on ACP Industrial Thin Client computers, please visit our web site at http://www.thinmanager.com
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