Need help Evaluating Citrix - your advise is appreciated!!!

[Ankor]

I have 6 regional servers that synchronize with each other and run the same applications. Applications are Excel and web based, and I keep the files on each server. My main goal is to centralize everything trying not to loose the speed.
Right now I am trying to evaluate Citrix products. Today is the first day I look into it, and I still have some basic questions. How does it work? What product should I purchase in order to be able to let the users use the applications from the same location? Should anything be installed on the client? What is the difference between Citrix® NFuse® Elite and Citrix® NFuse® Classic 1.7 they offer right now? I took a look at

http://www.citrix.com/products/

but still did not quite understand what product does what.

All your help is appreciated.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Those are quite far-reaching questions, but I'll try to summarise them concisely;

1) How does it work?

Citrix MetaFrame is, in Citrix's words, a "Value Add" to Microsoft Terminal Services. Terminal Services (originally written by Citrix) effectively splits the kernel into virtual sessions on the server that can be run remotely using a protocol called RDP. Citrix MetaFrame does a similar thing, but using a more efficient protocol called ICA. The main advantages of ICA over RDP are

i) ICA clients can be installed on just about anything with a processor, while RDP clients only work with Windows clients.

ii) Only ICA allows the publishing of applications.

iii) Features such as Client Drive Mapping, client clipboard, display resolutions and printing are greatly enhanced.

iv) ICA is faster and has a lower bandwidth requirement.

There are other advantages, but I think these are the main ones.

2) What product should I purchase in order to be able to let the users use the applications from the same location?

I would recommend MetaFrame XPa, so that you can load-balance the published applications and offer high availablity to your end users (if a server goes down, they can simply log back into the application immediately. This is NOT fault tolerance - the process is not automatic). The Citrix client combined with dial-up access will allow Program Neighborhood access to the servers, but many people are using NFuse to publish the applications to a web page, which generally makes everything easier for users. NFuse is free, as is the Citrix client.

3) Should anything be installed on the client? Yes. The Citrix client. From an NFuse web page, the web client is automatically downloaded and installed when the user logs in for the first time.

4) What is the difference between Citrix® NFuse® Elite and Citrix® NFuse® Classic 1.7 they offer right now?

The differences are getting smaller, as NFuse Classic has an Enterprise module for administration, but NFuse Elite is basically a "Portal", which can use Web Parts or other programs or scripts to automate content delivery, so that content can be collected from many sources and combined into a single web page.

NFuse Elite is a kind of Corporate doorway (hence Portal), on which not only the users programs appear, but company news, User Department information, Training updates, the weather and other modules. NFuse Elite is a kind of "portal-in-a-box", but does require several servers to create a portal server farm.

http://www.citrix.com/NFuse_Elite/access_portal_defined.asp

NFuse Classic, by comparison, is simply a web page which contains the users programs. It can be run from a single server, so is better for smaller installations.

Best way to find out really is to experience all 3 products via Citrix's demo room;

http://demoroom.citrix.com/

Hope this helps CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[Illuvatar]

As CitrixEngineer more or less explains: Citrix is great, however, like all good things in life: it is just as good as the quality of the administrator who is behind the keyboard !

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Agreed. There's a steep "learning curve", but once you get into it, from my own experience, you're hooked - on the sheer manageability you gain - especially if you go for XPe, with its resource management and application distribution components.

Many VARs (Value Added Resellers) can provide you with 45 or 90 day evaluation CDs of MetaFrame. CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[Ankor]

CitrixEngineer, THANK YOU!!! Perfect explanation.

I have another question: What does the connection license mean? If I buy 50 licenses, does it mean there can be 50 concurrent users on the server, or just 50 PCs that can physically be connected?

Thanks.

 

[Illuvatar]

You have to buy a product license which normally comes when you buy Citrix XP in the box. Then you can add additional licensepacks. For example, you buy citrix with 5 licenses. So there can be five sessions made to the server. When you add a 25 user pack, additional 25 sessions (user licenses) can be connected. This doesn't nescessary mean 25 different people can connect. One user can take up more than 1 user license. If you are using Seamless windows, normally, all apps you start from your client, take up 1 license. However, if there are changes in different settings (eg # of colors in different published apps, different screen sizes etc) then a new session will be made and the user is using another license.

You should count what the maximum of concurrent users will be. Then you have to decide how important it is if someone connects after all your licenses are in use and gets the message that there is no license left and he has to wait. If that is a big issue, get as much licenses as there are users you want to give citrix. Otherwise buy as many licenses as there will be concurrent users. Licenses are rather expensive... That's why.

 

[Ankor]

Thanks. My main concern was that it could be something like named license for each machine (like Arcplan), but since it is per session licensing, then I am fine. I already have experience calculating concurrent users .
Thank you again.