Citrix Metaframe v Terminal Services

zAbbo

At work I have been asked to give my opinion on these two.

A little background, we are migrating to a new type of software needed for our daily business. This software requires half decent PC`s, whereas we have p2, 64mb ram etc. machines. So it has been advised that we require either Citrix or TS by the software vendor(as is the norm for the application they install)

We have a 50user system, 1 Mail Server/Domain Controller (windows2000 server) and 1 Linux Fileserver.

Has anyone any experience using either Citrix or TS, which would you reccommend, our main conerns are

Performance
Availability
Expandability

I`m doing as much research as i can on this, any and all help is very much appreciated.

Also are they any alternatives to these as well. A quick a dirty guide to what they do would be helpful as well

Tom Dunne

I work in the IT dept of one of the major multi-nationals and we use Windows Terminal Server all the time. Citrix was phased out a number of years ago in favour of WTS.

I am not personally responsible for the WTS install/config but I do most of my job through a WTS connection. Therefore I am technically an end-user of WTS. For me, the benefits are as follows:

o Fast, reliable connection (especially over dial up)
o no noticable degradation in performance of the servers providing WTS access
o seems to be relatively straight forward to configure (according to the Windows heads)
o central management of all applications - no more installing software applications on end-user's PCs.

The greatest downside is that installations tend to be a little hit and miss, there seems to be a lot of confusion out there as to what type of installs can be done over a WTS connection and what need to be done at the console.

The company I work for is moving literally the whole software suite from Unix and VMS to both Windows and WTS, which I think in itself is a good ensorsement of WTS.

Capt'n Midnight

Citrix 1.8 needs TS 4 underneath - a real shoot your self in the foot as anyone who has looked at how M$ has treated it's "partners" in the past will know.

TS 2K - licencing - any XP pro /2K pro client does not need a license. So chances are this could be rolled out free. - for NT ./98 (PII's you would need CAL's)

TS 2K3 - XP PRO clients bought before april 2003 do not need a client license - everyone else does (go figure) - a real M$ rub your nose in it.

Citrix uses less bandwidth per client than TS - but if running on TS4 frequent reboots (daily/weekly !) are recommended because of memory leaks - Citrix also allows access to drives on the Client machine - you;d need sharing and scripts on TS to do this too (messy) so unless you have a special need for citrix features (bandwidth is getting cheaper) I'd recomend 2K

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For both TS and Citrix
M$ (licencing rant again) insist on a per client license on all thier apps - so if you want to run project / access on a MAC or a PDA you need to have a client license even though you can't install the sw on that client. - check with the Vendor for their policy - many companies do site licenses or concurrent licenses - academic if all 50 users need the APP.

*Licencing is my understanding of it - even if I got it right, the terms have probably changed again by the time you read this 'cos the latest trend is to update the license agreement in service packs..

Can't remember the bandwidth 12/18/32/64Kb depending on which product / version - newer ones better and citrix half of TS - if you are on a LAN - no problem - modems dialing in - no problem

Consider the licence costs vs. new hardware ! - your PC's ~ 5 years old which suggests penny pinching - or in real terms you are heading in to a period where they will start dying faster than they are replaced ..
To be blunt the TS CAL is worth about the same as those PC's - Citrix is more again.

Have a look at a bare bones system - for a few hundred euro per PC you will get new HW.

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Check with the vendor if there is a web front end - all you need is a browser and AFAIK - IIS CAL's are covered by the Windows license ??

Anyone know if any versions of VNC allow multiple desktops ???

[edit]forgot to mention that I've not had any dealings with the latest versions of Citrix only the older version, mainly because our current licencing meant that TS 2K was essentialy a freebie..

zAbbo

Originally posted by Capt'n Midnight
Anyone know if any versions of VNC allow multiple desktops ???

Yes the linux variant does allow it, but the Windows version only allows direct desktop usage.

Thanks lads I`m gaining a far better understanding of this already, so essentially we`re gonna need WTS anyway. Personally i think a Citrix rollout is overkill for a LAN with 50 machines.

i`ll have to do an analysis to see what way the cost will work out

zAbbo

Can anyone tell me the server requirements for WTS, would it require a seperate server, what spec?

Tom Dunne

We us Compaq DL360s and DL380s, which I believe are dual CPU Pentium III Xeons with 1 Gig of memory (the 380s may acutally be quad CPU).

We install our applications onto these machines and connect directly via WTS, so we don't use a seperate server for WTS services.

I am not sure what the minimum spec would be, though. I would imagine it would be on the Microsoft site.

griff

i have to say i love citrix we are placing our second citrix server this week however the reason we need it is end users transfer files from ther c drive to the network drive over citrix.

citrix is more expensive and tricky at time so unless you have a really need for citrix, ts could be the way to go

zAbbo

tom dunne,

How may users are on that network, and is a simple case of install the client apps server side, i think in our case we only need a few

i`m edging more to WTS, and building the server myself

griff

we have 110 users with 40 on citrix some apps area pain to install. unless you must have some of the functions citrix offers then wts would be very easy to do yourself citrix would require specialist help.

Tom Dunne

Originally posted by bazH

How may users are on that network

I am talking corporate IT environment here - so roughly 1,000 users (though not all at the same time, I don't think WTS is that solid ).

is a simple case of install the client apps server side, i think in our case we only need a few

Yes, it is really a case of install apps on the server, give client PC's the remote desktop software (which comes with W2k upwards).

None of our software has been specifically written to be used in a WTS environment. We also use off the shelf stuff, like Oracle, SQL Server, Exceed, Keaterm, etc. never any problems with them being used via WTS.