NX Advanced Server Enables University to Implement NX-Hosted Data Center

Rome, Italy, June 15, 2009 – NoMachine, creator and global provider of remote access NX software, announced that the University of Salford, one of UK's most enterprising universities with a first-class reputation for real-world teaching and ground-breaking research, located in Manchester, is providing students with virtual around-the-clock access from any location to Linux desktops and applications via NX.

Students in the School of Computing or Science and Engineering require access to the Linux environment along with students from other areas like the School of Business.  They need access to a wide variety of applications like Epiphany and Konqueror for Internet access, Freemind and Planner for system documentation, Weka for data mining, and programming languages such as Java and Perl. 

The conversion of the traditional PC labs into a virtual NX-hosted data center not only reduces administrators'  work time and IT expenditure, but has also made the transition from Windows to Linux smooth for the students.  A fully-featured Unix terminal server and desktop consolidation tool, NX Advanced Server allows Salford to host an unlimited number of virtual desktop sessions, allowing rapid provisioning with its multi-node capabilities.

NX also provides centralized management and monitoring of all NX nodes, improving overall operational efficiency.  Offering support for both Windows and Linux-based applications and desktops, the flexibility that NX provides has given students not only the 24/7 access that they had been demanding, but the NX connection and friendly GUI made the migration a much less intimidating experience.

There are 10 labs containing several hundred thin clients with the NX Client installed providing approximately 400 users access to the Linux servers in the campus data center. This new solution reduces administrators' workload from managing 400 individual desktops to only two Linux servers.  Software installation, configuration changes and security updates are performed quicker on the servers without impacting the computers or the students' work.

Previously, students were only able to work in the labs on campus during specific hours of the day. Enhancing lab service for students, NX provides students with convenient remote access to the labs on weekends, late into the night and from the convenience of their own homes or wherever else they may be.  Foreign students have even used NX to access the system from Greece, while visiting home.  By installing the NX Client on their personal laptop or PC, students have access to their desktop and applications, hosted in the virtual lab, right at their fingertips.

Tony Addyman said, “NX software just works.  Even when we upgraded our Ubuntu servers and some things needed adjusting, the next NX release came out very quickly and our users were not affected.  NX has allowed us to re-think the computing lab so that the desktop can go wherever the student goes, giving the students a taste of cloud computing.”