John W. Colby
jcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Wed Feb 19 11:54:01 CST 2003
Judy,
I have never used Citrix, however I do use Terminal Server remote access
which is a similar concept. I use this to remote in to the client's
machine. I can tell you it works very well for me, but I also have a very
high speed internet connection - the fastest I have ever seen anywhere.
Another user is complaining that it is slow - this over a DSL line.
This is a very small client. 4 workstations at the office and a maximum of
4 connections back in from remote locations. In fact not even that since
they are using the built in Terminal Server software that comes with Win2K
which only allows two simultaneous connections without purchasing additional
licenses.
What I think I know generically is that any remote access solution like this
sets up a virtual machine, which means that all application software is
loaded once per user. IOW, if the user logs in and loads word, a browser
and Access, then the server now has three applications running in addition
to it's normal load. If another user logs in and loads Word, a browser and
Access, three more applications load for that user. Because of this, you
need to set aside enough memory on average for each user to load whatever
they need to load. In our above scenario, IE takes ~24 mb, Access ~32-48 mb
(depending on database size), and Word takes ~16 mb or so. These numbers
are rough estimates and others will jump in I am sure with better numbers.
Thus this user would need 24 + 28 + 16 mb plus no doubt some additional
overhead, so roughly 68 mb for that one user.
As you can see this isn't an exact science unless you can dictate exactly
what apps they can run remotely.
If you just "decided" to set aside 128 mb / user, you could fit 8 users / gb
of ram. There are going to be a slew of other issues. For example if these
users are pounding the system hard, you have to have sufficient bandwidth
between the server and the internet to handle all the screen shots being
thrown out etc. The server itself will need to be a big / fast machine, or
a bunch of big / fast machines.
Keep us informed if this actually happens. I'd love to see the numbers and
know how it "feels" to the users.
John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com
-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-admin at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-admin at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Judy Johnson
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 12:39 PM
To: AccessD
Subject: [AccessD] Citrix
Hi Group - I sent this same request out last February as the issue to use
Citrix came up at that time. The client decided it was not a viable
solution.
New players, getting ready to roll out Office XP, they now want to look at
Citrix as a solution again. Could I have your thoughts?
This is our situation:
a.. 6 offices within the continental US.
b.. 40-50 users. Each office has their own local NT server. Users are
not evenly distributed (some offices have 2, others have a dozen). We also
have about 6 users who work from their homes, most using dial-up.
c.. There are two areas within the organization, each has their own
application. The "applications" are currently running in A97. I've converted
a test copy to XP and they work fine - no reprogramming was necessary. The
FEs reside on the user's PC. They are used for data entry and reporting.
(The last FE update was in October 2002 - very low maintenance FE). The data
is located in an mdb on each local server. All servers are linked through
NT. One location requires access to all files so a program was written to
create an Aggregate copy of all data for reporting purposes. The "Aggregate
download" is performed on a monthly basis for Aggregate reporting only.
d.. The users also commonly cut & paste from a web based reference
manual into a comments field within the data entry form.
The company is anticipating a 2 year window for roll out of XP and are
concerned about having 2 versions of the FE (A97 and XP). My recommendations
is to leave the data mdb in A97 until everyone has XP, then we'd convert the
data. I've tested data entry from XP to the A97 and it works fine. Frankly,
I don't see how the benefit of Citrix can possibly outweigh it's cost. Does
anyone "see" something I may be missing?
Am I correct in understanding that a dedicated server is required? I'm
being told no fail over is required. I believe that means all of my users
will be on the same server, with their FE sitting on the server. If the
server goes down - everyone will be down. But my bigger concern is response
time! We're talking 30-40 concurrent Access users doing data entry and major
report generation. Does anyone have any idea how I can realistically test
this scenario? The IT folks are offering a test environment next week.
Thanks for your input.
Judy Johnson
jjwrite at earthlink.net
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