Shifting away from traditional personal computing - or at least trying!

I've not posted anything for a while as I'm currently engaged on one of, if not the biggest, Tivoli Identity Manager projects ever embarked upon with a side order of SSO. All this is well on the way to a full live deployment so I'll be sure to post what I can on its many interesting features once that's up and running.

In the meantime I thought a post on a bit of home technology geekery would get me back into the swing of things.
A question that's been doing the rounds in my head for a while now is whether it is truly possible to remove the need for a traditional desktop/laptop and instead move to a thin-client private-Cloud type setup? The advantages for me personally would be that when working remotely I could swap out my heavy, temperamental and constantly warm laptop for something light, thin and easy to use. What started this process of self-examination was a realisation that I use my laptop in basically two modes; information gathering (mail, browsing, researching) and system development. When working in an information gathering mode my dual-core 3GB, 64bit Windows laptop is overkill. I can imagine the CPU rapping its fingers on the table or playing Civilisation or Angry Birds while I work. When working in system development mode the laptop is not powerful enough and is limited by the number of virtual machines I can store locally on the laptop's (or my external) hard disk as well as system resources that Windows 7 will spare me.

A better approach I believe would be where:

1. All heavy lifting (running a VM, disk space utilisation, backup) would be done remotely in a 'private Cloud' (or remote data center as it used to be called).
   
2. A tunnel exists into my private Cloud that is highly secure, reliable and easy to use
3. The private Cloud uses the minimum amount of power
   
4. The chosen thin-client has an excellent human computer interface (i.e. it was made to be an interface and not a jack of all trades mini-pc) with a high resolution screen, great connectivity and rapid startup time.
5. The connection between my thin-client and private Cloud has great reliability, speed and no data limits.
6. I can still effectively work in an information gathering or system development mode with no change or reduction in productivity.

Now this sounds like a bit of a long shot at the moment, however I believe that this usage model is where the personal computing will move to next at both work and home. With the availability of on-demand and remote storage, music, videos, email and document management I cannot see how personal computing can continue in its current fashion. In the next few years tablets and netbooks will become the norm, with 'traditional' desktops going the way of the floppy disk and CRT monitor.

To start the process of (hopefully) achieving my goal of retiring my laptop, I have started to construct my own private Cloud, which will help with achieving point (1) above - 'offload all heavy lifting'. Initially I thought I'd have to buy a super expensive server and spend a great deal of time and effort setting this up. That's when I came across the fantastic HP Proliant Microserver.

HP were (perhaps still are) offering a £100 cashback on these fantastic servers, which when taken in light of the average purchase price of £200 is an absolute steal. The dual core 1.3GHz cpu seems small however it has many virtualisation features that give it much more punch. Since receiving my microserver around a week ago I have installed 3 mixed HDDs that I had lying around along with 2x4GB sticks of RAM, which cost me just £50. I've got on my eye on a Samsung EcoGreen f4 2TB drive as well which is just £50 if I need more space. I'm currently in the process of installing ESXi 4.1 onto the Proliant after which I'll start migrating over my existing VMs into the 1TB of collective disk space that this unit now has.

In parallel with the setup of my Proliant I'm also currently working on items (2) and (3). The secure tunnel will be achieved using OpenVPN, which I have found to be very easy to use and comes with some great utilities for supporting certificate based user authentication. My home router supports Dynamic DNS registration and port forwarding, which will allow me to dial into the VPN server remotely and feed in my VPN certificate. The power requirements I have will be achieved by setting the machine into hibernate mode when I'm not using it and then kicking it into life with a WoL packet when needed. You can also get a LightsOut card for the Proliant for under £30 which would allow me to power the unit off and on remotely. Something to consider at a later date.

I'm currently a day or two away from getting this all completed, which at the very least will help with the system development and testing I need to do on a daily basis. Having the ability to dial in remotely and start up one of the many VMs I have will be invaluable, along with the fact that these will be backed up and ready for duplication at the drop of a hat.

I'll be sure to post on the success of the above as well as the process of choosing a thin-client, which is currently not so clear. For info what I have in mind is a Android tablet that has USB and VGA/HDMI connectivity. Connectivity to the private Cloud will be achieved via an app that supports RDP-type connections over a VPN. Looking at the current apps available on the Android app store I can see that there are some good candidates.

Feedback comments from anyone else who's interested in moving away from the traditional PC way of working would be most welcome.