Pano Express for SMB/Education - Requirements

Required Components/Settings for Installation

The default installation instructions assume that your deployment has certain network and peripheral components available in addition to the contents of your Pano Express.  

Network Infrastructure: for the default installation you need to have the following:

  1. Local Area Network: Ethernet LAN connections of 100 Mbps or better - optimally a switched 100 Mbps switched Ethernet network for the Pano Devices connected to a 1 Gbps Ethernet backbone for the Pano Express server and your other file servers.
  2. Network Switch Ports and Cables: at least one open Gigabit port is needed for the Pano Express server.   If you are using redundant LAN switches, connect the two LAN ports on the server to the two switches.  You will also need to supply two Cat-5e or Cat-6 cables long enough to reach from your LAN switches to the back of the Pano Express server.
  3. File Server: because only limited space is available for each desktop virtual machine's (DVM's) image (around 12 GB per DVM) and to ensure that user files are correctly backed up you should provide a separate file server for storage of user files.  Often you can use group policies set either inside the DVM's OS or via Active Directory to use folder redirection to make the My Documents (under XP) or Documents (under Windows 7) appear to be a local folder (inside the user's DVM) while actually storing them on the file server.
  4. IP Subnet and Network Info: The LAN must be laid out so that all of your Pano Zero Clients and the Pano Express server will be on the same IP subnet.  Intervening Ethernet switches or hubs are fine as long as the traffic stays on the same vlan/broadcast domain. You will also need to collect the subnet mask, the IP addresses for your primary DNS server and your default gateway, and the DNS domain name to which the ESXi host will be joined.
  5. Static IP Numbers: Although Pano Controller can work with dynamically assigned IP numbers (see [HelpTopic:DHCP-assigned dynamic IP numbers]), for the default Pano Express installation four static IP numbers are used to simplify name resolution issues.  Static IP numbers must be reserved for the following:
    1. EXSi physical host (server)
    2. Pano Controller appliance VM
    3. vCenter VM (running Windows Server 2008 R2)
  6. Directory Service: (optional) a directory service like Microsoft Active Directory (version 2003 or higher) is optional for Pano Express but required for access to any user-based features and authentication.  The Pano System also supports other directory services (see [HelpTopic:Supported Directory Services]).  See the instructions in the Connect Directory Service step for more information.

Client Peripherals/Hardware:  for each Pano Zero Client, the following will be required where it is being installed:

  1. An AC power outlet for the Pano Zero Client power supply
  2. A 100 Mbps or better Ethernet connection.
  3. A DVI-compatible monitor with a recommended resolution of at least 1024x768 - for information on compatible monitor resolutions please see [HelpTopic:Supported Monitor Resolutions on Pano G2].
  4. A USB keyboard and mouse - for information on compatible USB devices please see [HelpTopic:Support for USB Devices].

Power Protection: The Pano Express server needs to be provided with continuous, well-regulated AC power. We recommend that you connect it to an appropriately sized Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) to ensure that momentary power drops or voltage sags do not cause an outage or even potential damage to the server. This is especially critical when deployed in areas with frequent thunderstorms or brown-outs. Please refer to the power consumption numbers below and to the likely length of power outages (obtained from your local electrical utility) to determine how much UPS capacity is required.

Power Consumption:  Using the online HP Power Advisor tool (available at http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/solutions/power/index.html), general power consumption calculated for the HP G7 DL360 server configuration used in Pano Express is 335 watts at 100% load and 135 watts when idle (all assuming 115V AC power used). These figures may be far greater than the exact power consumption when running a specific Pano Express deployment as it should never cause a continuous 100% utilization on the server.  

A more likely peak utilization rate of 60% uses only 254 watts to support 50 Pano Zero Clients (roughly 8 watts/seat at peak periods).  At a typical average utilization of 40% (over a 24-hour day), power use for the server and storage drops to 214 watts (4.3 watts/seat).  This means that along with the maximum of 6.5 watts used by each Pano Zero Client, a single Pano Express seat (client, server and storage) uses only 10.8 watts – less than most thin clients use by themselves.

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