Any citrix users/experts, or users of thin client?

[admars]

Hi,

at work we're in the process of switching to using Citrix rather than Terminal Services for our offshore teams. Presently most are using published apps, as we originally told that was best for us, but a more recent consultant says we'd be better of using published desktops, which for some of what we do, may be our only option anyway.

I was wondering if any of you guys have opinions from a user or support point of view.

http://www.brianmadden.com/ has a world of info, but I was after more feedback from people's experiences rather than "experts" saying what works best on paper


We were also told today the company is thinking of moving to a thin client model next year, for local UK office workers. They need to investigate whether the investment in software and servers would be cheaper than a PC upgrade/replacement plan. As an IT bloke it seems great, we have so many users with cr@p PCs, different models of PCs, and different ppl have different apps, it would be nice to only have to make changes in 1 or 2 places rather than visit loads of PCs

So, just wondering if anyone had real world experience of that.

Cheers

Al

[haydnwalker]

In my experience - the difference between published apps and citrix desktop is negligable. If users are having to use multiple apps via citrix at once, then the desktop seems a good way to go, but if its just the odd app (outlook for example) then published apps are fine.

Thin client model has pros and cons - you would need alot of network bandwidth for this as everything runs over the network. And it can work out rather expensive if you are thinking of taking the PCs out and replacing them with thin client terminals (this isn't strictly necessary though)

Personally I prefer citrix desktop as it looks just as it would on Terminal Services. Also theres Citrix Session Shadowing which is the equivalent to VNC etc so remote helpdesk operators can see what users are doing.

Don't know if any of this is useful for you

[gazzae]

Originally Posted by haydnwalker

Thin client model has pros and cons - you would need alot of network bandwidth for this as everything runs over the network.

Not sure if that is true, I've a site with 50 citrix users running over a 2meg mpls circuit with no form of WAN optimisation

[admars]

Cheers guys.

published apps we like as it's what the users are used to from just RDPing to a TS. At the moment some are using published apps, and I saw on 1 citrix server 1 user had 10 excel sessions, 1 email, and a few other things, so for him at least a published desktop would seem to be more sensible!

i think maybe what happened is that, the previous instructor/consultant was going by the book examples, and didn't realise we would have ppl using Citrix like they would a local PC, the newer consultant has seen what we do.

the thin client roll out is interesting. I don't think it will be a roll out for users as such, some ppl have PCs 3, 4, even 5 years old, which need replacing, so I think some management are hoping that they can buy a couple of good servers and that will stop the need to replace/upgrade lots of PC. We only found out about that idea today, so not sure if it is a serious consideration or if anyone has investigated thoroughly yet.

have used the citrix shadowing a couple of times to shadow an overseas user and was very impressed how responsive it was. We've been fans of vnc on our site for years, another site uses dameware.

Cheers

Al

[Matthew]

That word Citrix, just take the C off and replace with Sh!! We are a heavy user of Citrix (I work for a NHS trust), it's good for somethings but not for everything in my experience. To be honest our setup could be a lot better but those that work in the servers team who manage it have screwed it to be honest. From an engineer view its great if people need stuff installing because it can be just published. We have some 150 sites running on connections from 1mb to 100mb fibre links seem to have few problems, we even run over 3G connections and its not too bad. I have had some experience of the shadow tool and its not too bad. Overall if you have a good back end setup it will work fine and will be a life saver at times.

Just my views.

[Mr Smooth]

As someone who has implemented citrix at many sites, as well as using it personally I can give you a few pointers and my views.

Citrix like any solution has its flaws, and the more users you have the more it makes sense to use it, despite this.

Its all in the implentation, and the policies you put in place, and also whether you give in to the user or not.

Its all about TCO (Total cost of ownership) and support, as well as ease and flexibilty.

Maintaining support for 5 users pc's, 1 server isnt going to take a lot. When you get to 100 pcs and 10 Servers, you start to get to the realms of remote users, maintaining and supporting the end users pc's and it can get exponentially expensive and time consuming.

Citrix (almost) takes that away. You dont have to only have remote users using it. All users even on the local network can also use it, and it just makes sense.

It takes away the need to support the end users pc's, which as any IT person knows is normally the biggest problem when it comes to IT Support.

Everything can be run from an Internet browser (including shadowing) and there is no need to run a desktop at all. Its fast and needs less bandwidth than a terminal server and its more secure.

There are some instances why you might need to use the desktop, but in my experience, its only ever been clients that has users 'that are used to the desktop' rather than actually needing it.

If that is the case, you start on a slippery slope where users have access to the server, and if configured incorrectly can give access to shut the server down for example. I just wouldn't recommend it.

The only issues I tend to see is with printing, and these can be rationalised and simplified with the correct policies in place. Those who implement or support citrix will know what I mean.

The fact that you can give access to an application within 10 seconds is a deal breaker for me when you look at the alternative.

[Matthew]

Printing, well thats another story!! It's not too bad, we just seem to have soo many problems at times with that.

[admars]

Yes, we we warned on our training that printing can cause headaches, so we were quite happy when we were told the offshore element aren't allowed to print Now if we do go the thin client route here, then we will have to make sure we know what we're doing from I remember.

thanks

Al

[Mr Smooth]

Printing with citrix.
Best to have policies for each type of user.
Local Network Users, publish one printer per department.
Remote Network users create default local printer only.

Send a list of supported printers by citrix to remote users and if they have a printer that isnt on the list, dont support it, and disable printing for the user until they have one.

We have these policies in place for hundreds of user and clients, and we hardly ever get issues now, and we did until we were firm about it.

[Halcyon]

Originally Posted by Matthew

Printing, well thats another story!! It's not too bad, we just seem to have soo many problems at times with that.

I have to agree with you. Printing from within Citrix to a printer on our network is a nightmare to setup.

[Hom3r]

Citrix

I cannot say what I think about this pile of poo, I'll get banned for life.


Your PC life will be hell, all our work is done through it, I was typing and waitting for word to catch up, I cannot open mor than 3 word doc at time.

[admars]

So far i haven't been very involves in it, but when I've shadowed some of the overseas users the shadowing seems better than it was using MS Server 2003 TS shadowing, and a lot of the users say speeds are faster, which we're pleasantly surprised by. I don't think printing is involved.