Turn in to Terminal Servers is...

[Housemartins]

300 Fat Clients on MS-SQL Server 2000, with Win2000 Pro, 2 Batch Servers, 1 Web Server, 1 Security/Application Server, Web Sphere 3.5 etc. Should we turn into Terminal Stations Solutions (e.g with Citrix), or the cost is too high and the results too poor?

 

[monkeylizard]

It's purely a hardware & deployment management issue. If you think you can do Citrix servers for less than the cost of replacing desktops to meet the JDE requirements, then that's really your only gain.

With package deployment you will have central Citrix boxes to deploy to (so fewer machines to deploy to) but it has to be done manually. You actually have to Install (via Add/Remove Programs) each update package to your Citrix boxes, and that has to be done with no users on. I believe Citrix has a plug in for synchronizing the servers in a farm, so you'd really only install to one server then sync up the rest to that one. We only have 2 (and about 25 users on them) so we didn't bother with that plug-in.

Licensing doesn't really drop at all for most apps. Each user still has a desktop, just an older one, so still requires an OS license. SQL server requires a license for each user, regardless of how much multiplexing/middleware is in place, so no gain there. Unless your desktops are Win2K or XP, they will still require a CAL to authenticate to your Win2K Domain.

If you already have the PCs in place for your FAT clients, I wouldn't change them to Citrix. If this is a completely new install of JDE (or an expansion of existing install) then Citrix might be good.

Remember that Citrix does not allow development work to be done (at least not without tweaking some things ). This means you can't check out objects to mod or create new objects to check-in from a Citrix client. You will still need some FAT clients for your developers.

If I had the project to do over again I would have just bought more desktops and done without Citrix, but as I said above, we only have about 25 users on ours. With 300, you may see more cost benefit.

Monkeylizard
-Isaiah 35-