Dell Wyse 7040: Great for Fed, OEM and Lots More...

Since Dell Cloud Client-Computing launched the Dell Wyse 7040 thin client in June, we've received a very positive reaction from our customers. We developed this product based on two main priorities: serious power and serious security. Its rich manageability has also got a favourable reaction - continue reading for an early flavour of how this product is helping our customers overcome challenges they face in conventional VDI environments and in others where small form-factor, high level of compute power prove to be a compelling mix.

Thin clients are being used for an increasingly broad range of virtual desktop use cases. Gone are the days when they were used only by task workers and low-end knowledge workers. The ability of data center technology, from providers like Dell, VMware and Nvidia, to deliver rich desktop experiences to high-end user environments such as CAD/CAM or financial trading floors, has created a requirement for significant compute power on the thin client to allow activities like decoding high-end graphics. In addition, desktop virtualization does not always mean data center-hosted virtualization; client-hosted virtualization technologies are now also widely used, particularly in high-security MILS (Multiple Independent Levels of Security) environments such as the US Federal SecureView environment. SecureView-type environments can require high levels of compute power, since they use local compute resources for all user activities. The Dell Wyse 7040 delivers a level of compute power that meets all of the above scenarios and more. In fact, in an independent performance test carried out by Miercom, overall PassMark results for the Dell Wyse 7040 were 31 percent better than those seen for a comparable competitor product, the HP T730 (PassMark is a widely used performance benchmarking tool). More information on the Miercom test is available here. 

As a product that was designed with the needs of our Federal customers in mind, it's not surprising that the Wyse 7040 meets the most stringent security and regulatory requirements, including OPAL-compliant storage options, TAA, Energy-Star, EPEAT and WES7p features such as Bitlocker. We've also added some cool security components as a result of our integration with the Dell Command Configure (DCC) tool – more on this later. However, one subtle but interesting piece of the overall security solution provided by this device is the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip. Our TPM chip is FIPS 140-2 compliant. FIPS 140-2 is a U.S. government computer security standard used to accredit cryptographic modules, and per NIST website "Modules validated as conforming to FIPS 140-1 and FIPS 140-2 are accepted by .. Federal Agencies .. for the protection of sensitive information." If you need TPM, you should check whether your vendor is providing you with a FIPS 140-2-compliant TPM module. Not "pending" or "expected" - now. You might be disappointed with what you find out.

 Not surprisingly, the Wyse 7040 can be managed by Wyse Device Manager (WDM), Dell's secure and highly scalable management and monitoring solution for zero and thin clients; however it also has another management option that you will be interested in. Dell Command Configure (DCC) is part of the Dell Client Command Suite (DCCS) tool suite - a real hidden gem in the Dell client portfolio. I like to think of DCC as an Active Directory Group Policy for the BIOS settings on your Dell client estate - configure once, deploy to many. Want to set the BIOS password on all of your 7040 thin clients? Configure all USB ports so that they can't be used for anything except keyboard and mouse? Disable PXE boot? Just configure that on the BIOS of your reference system using DCC and then roll it out to your entire estate using your management tool of choice (WDM or SCCM). Nice.

 I mentioned the positive reaction to the Wyse 7040 device at the start of this post; my favourite quote is from an OEM customer who stated that the Wyse 7040 is "rock solid and more than we ever could have asked for." That's the kind of reaction that we expected and that's why we gave it the tagline "Serious Power, Serious Security" - so what are you waiting for? Call your Dell Sales contact and test drive the new Dell Wyse 7040 now...

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