Licensing/Purchasing Question 1

[webuser]

I am brand new to Metaframe. I need some clarification about licensing, Starter Packs and Connection Packs.

First of all, are licenses concurrent, or does each Workstation that accesses need a separate license?

Secondly, assuming I have nothing now, and I have about 120 users, what would I need to purchase (i.e starter packs, connections etc.)

*I am most likely going to purchase either the advanced edition or Enterprise editions. And I am refering here to the latest version of Metaframe (I believe they are calling it 'Citrix MetaFrame XP Presentation Server'

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[JeffHicks]

Citrix licensing is per concurrent user per farm, unless you decide to configure it differently. You can assign licenses to servers that will be removed from the overall pool. If this is you first purchase, I would recommend buying one starter pack (includes the physical media) and the rest connection licenses. The cost difference for my reseller is $.08 US so it is not a big cost difference. Thus, I would purchase a 20 pack starter kit and 2 50 packs to reach the 120 user count. One caveat is that licenses are installed into a farm and are not shared between farms. Thus, you may want to buy 5 20 packs if you think you will need multiple farms. I have never found a need for multiple farms in a single organization, but the need may arise. Again, there is no cost difference through my reseller between 2 50 packs or 5 20 packs.

I would strongly recommend purchasing Subscription Advantage. It is roughly 1/5 the cost of a new license, so if you plan to upgrade in the next 5 years, it will pay for itself (we upgrade ever 3 years so it actually saves us money). Additionally, you get the updates when they are released, rather than waiting until your company shells out for the upgrade licenses.

All of this ignores the Microsoft licensing costs and requirements, which still apply.

 

[webuser]

Thanks for your reply. It was very helpful. One other question though...
I know Metaframe is used for connecting users over a slow WAN connection. (We use Terminal Services for our small branches). But what I am wondering is, do organizatiobns use Metaframe for users on a LAN. In other words, Bandwith is not the issue, but rather centralized management, the cost for upgrading workstations etc. So, for my company with about 120 Workstations on the LAN, is it logical to try and have all of the users use applications off of the Metaframe servers as opposed to the traditional way (just connecting directly?) Are there major disadvantages to the Metaframe approach under this scenario? Thanks again!!!

 

[JeffHicks]

In every Citrix implementation I have done, the majority of the users were LAN users who accessed applications on Citrix because of the management or maintenance cost savings with maintaining several servers versus hundreds of workstations. Citrix is one of many ways to minimize the application management process. SMS and other applications are good too, I am just must comfortable with Citrix, so it is the solution I tend to push. The nice thing about Citrix is that looking at it for a user perspective, once you have one application on, there are no additional license cost for a second application. In other words, there is no difference in license cost if a user runs one Citrix served application or 10 Citrix served applications. The only additional cost is server capacity (which is getting cheaper by the minute). As always, the hard sell with Citrix is cost. Can you show a good ROI on Citrix versus the old fashioned way of touching desktops (or even other solutions like SMS)?

 

[webuser]

Again, thanks. I am a little confused about what you mean by "there is no difference in license cost if a user runs one Citrix served application or 10 Citrix served applications". I was under the impression that if for example 10 users access Microsoft Office on the server, you still need 10 licenses, and if you have another app, you still pay per user per license. Am I wrong or am I misunderstanding you?

Also, is it a worthwhile risk with a Citrix solution by putting all your eggs in one basket (i.e if the server farm goes down, all users are out of luck...). Does this happen???

Again, Thanks.

 

[JeffHicks]

By default, Citrix licensing is per concurrent user. It is setup so that if one user runs 3 applications at the same time on 2 servers that user will only use one license as long as they are all run from the same client and the applications have the same published application settings. Thus, if you have 100 users in your company and every user connects to the farm and runs 1000 applications, you only use 100 licenses. There are factors that may cause a user to eat up more than one license, but in general, it is per concurrent user not per application or per server connection.

Regarding risk, I will have to defer to your judgement. There are things you can do to reduce the risk of failure. I spec out my farms with the minimum servers needed to serve the user load + 1 extra production server + 2 test servers. This allows me the freedom to test applications over two servers (my totally test server and my QA test server) and also the freedom to take down a production server without interfering with users. Using the load balancing features of Metaframe XPa or XPe, you can equalize the server loads. The only single sources of failure in my implementations are the SQL database that is the datastore and the network. As of yet, neither of these have broken in such a manner that I could not get them back up in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. before the users started screaming).

 

[xs4citrix]

>>I was under the impression that if for example 10 users access Microsoft Office on the server, you still need 10 licenses, and if you have another app, you still pay per user per license. Am I wrong or am I misunderstanding you?<<

You are correct. Jeff is only talking about the citrix licenses, not about the software you plan to run on it. Usually software used named licenses, so using citrix will not help you with this.

Citrix can be helpfull in the following situations:
- If centralised application management is desired.
- A matter of cost reduction, since no desktops need to be purchased. (a new desktop is 1000$, and a server handeling 25 users is 4000$)
- If you have applications that can only use TC technology to use it on a wan environment, or using the internet. (normal lan apps now become wan apps without reprogramming) This one is usually used to deploy apps to places where there is no IT support.

http://www.printingsupport.com

Free citrixprinting support

 

[JeffHicks]

Yes, I apologize for the confusion. The only licensing I am refering to is Citrix. I do not attempt to discuss any other vendor (especially not Microsoft) as they each have there own licensing scheme.