Thick clients

A thick client is a laptop or desktop running a full version of a workstation operating system, for example, Windows 7. The thick client has a fully usable operating system and uses a natively-installed VMware View Client to connect to the VDI.

A few examples of thick clients are as follows:

• A Dell OptiPlex workstation

• A Lenovo laptop

• An Apple MacBook Pro

One of the most common advantages of thick clients is that they provide high performance from a graphics offloading perspective.

Often, during a migration to a virtual desktop solution from an existing physical desktop environment, the organization will be interested to phase-in thin or zero clients. This approach is common in organizations that have recently purchased new thick clients (for example, workstations) and/or organizations that are not up for an upgrade for several years to come. However, by phasing-in thin or zero clients, the organization will still be forced to manage the underlying OS of the thick client.

If the decision...