Anyone published Office products on Citrix servers?

LoriStephens

Well Known Member
Hi,

Our users will all be on Citrix. They have a need for Excel also. Has
anyone published excel on their Citrix servers? If so, what Citrix servers
are you using?

Ours are not really made for running apps and I'm wondering how much of a
problem this will cause. We talked about having one server set up for that
but then you have to direct traffic to that one server and we have a Citrix
Farm of servers and don't want to do that... kind of defeats the purpose of
the farm.

So, I told my guys that I have all of these people using Citrix out here on
the list and I'm going to solicit to see what you're all doing and how and
all that good stuff.

Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks,

Lori
OW Xe SP16 Update 2
AS400 V5R1 NT
Citrix
email: [email protected]
 
Lori
We are using Citrix XPa on a trial basis right now and are using Office 2000
products with no problems that we are aware of.

XE Update 3 17.1 AS400 V4R5 WIN2K NT Citrix XP

Libbi Fletcher
HoMedics, Inc.
M.I.S. Department
248-863-3001 ext. 1281
[email protected]
 
Lori :

I've published Office 2000 products on Citrix W2000 XPa Servers that
already had Xe on them and haven't had any trouble.
Of course, Office will demand CPU and RAM resources from your servers.

Sebastian
 
Lori, what do you mean when you say that your Citrix Servers aren't meant to run apps? We offer excel via Citrix. When a user exports to Excel, it automatically copies the data into a spreadsheet running on the Citrix server. Generally, we have them save it to a network drive and re-open it in a local version for manipulation, though. But, they don't have to.

Regards.

Ryan Hunt
OneWorld XE; Update2; SP17.1_E1
AS400; V4R5
DS: Win2k SP2, SQL 7.0 SP3
TSE's: Win2k(SP2) & NT4.0(SP6a) with Metaframe 1.8
 
We have excel running on our JDE citrix servers so that they can use the import/export functions. Doesn't cause us any problems but it is something that is *very* lightly used (i.e. only a handful of users even know how to do it). That is why I allow it to continue. We do not publish excel separately, it is just installed and is allowed to be called from the users session. I would not recommend having anything else running on your JDE citrix servers except in an instance such as this.

The rule of thumb for any citrix installation is one app per server. Now the office suite kind of breaks that rule as most people will install and publish the entire suite from their server(s) and treat the whole suite as the published application for that server(s).

I'm not sure I follow your comment on defeating the purpose of a farm. If your servers are all joined to the same farm then you still have all the benefits of a single farm. You are only publishing the excel application on one or maybe two separate servers, but the servers are all still managed and licensed as a single farm. Clients will see the published excel icon right beside the JDE golf-ball without you having to do anything at all to your remote clients. That is the precise benefit of a farm. All of your servers in a farm can be serving up different applications and the clients couldn't care less where they get the requested application from, all that happens in the background. That is exactly what a farm is for.

What citrix servers are we using? Again I'm not sure exactly what you are seeking with this question, so I'll give you everything and hope it answers your question. We are using MF1.8a on Windows 2000 in an NT4 domain. The hardware is an HP LC-2000 chassis w/ dual PIII 1Ghz procs, 2GB RAM and a RAID 1+0 array. Hosts 35+ clients per. We have 3 of them.

I've got two recommendations for you based upon your original email. I would not recommend running a published application from only one server. You should always have two at least for redundancy & load balancing abilities unless your budget just doesn't allow for it. I am also a little worried about your comment that "Ours are not really made for running apps" What does that mean exactly? Are you trying to bring an old file server back to life to run as a citrix server? That would probably not be the best solution from a stability or performance standpoint.

HTH
Jeff



B73.3.2 SP11.1,NT,MS-SQL7 SP2
WIN2K/CTX 1.8a SP2/FR1 & Fat (LIVE)

XE-U4 SP 18_B1,Win2K SP2,MS-SQL2K
WIN2K/CTX 1.8a SP2/FR1 & Fat (TEST)
 
I've published excel, outlook and acces. There's a little MS trick to do
this, let me see if I can find the document....mmm....mmmm...mmmmmm... noop,
I didn't find the document, let me try searching MS..........ok, here it is
the Transcription:

Hope it helps you.

OW B73.3.2 SP 16.1 / NT 4.0 Sp 6a/ SQL 7.0 (XE and Win2000 soon)

Greetings.
S.E. Ricardo Paz Castanon
Systems Chief
Comercial de Herramientas S.a de C.v.
+52(81) 8369-35-35 ext. 286
[email protected]
www.cohesa.com






OFF2000: Setup Fails When Installing on a Windows Terminal Server (Q217640)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
The information in this article applies to:


Microsoft Windows 2000 , Server, on platform(s):
Microsoft Windows 2000 , Advanced Server
Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0 , , Terminal Server Edition
Microsoft Windows 2000 , Server


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----


SYMPTOMS
When you attempt to install Microsoft Office, or insert the CD-ROM into the
CD-ROM drive, the following error message may appear:

Some default settings in Microsoft Office 2000 setup do not work properly on
a Windows Terminal Server. To install Office on Terminal Server, you must
use the instructions and tools available in your Office 2000 Resource Kit or
at http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/.
When you click OK , another error message appears:
Installation ended prematurely because of an error.
When you click OK again, Setup quits.



CAUSE
This problem occurs when you install Office on Microsoft Windows Terminal
Server and you have not used the transform (.mst file) provided with the
Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit . When you insert the CD-ROM into the
CD-ROM drive, Setup automatically starts from the Autorun.inf file, but
Setup fails because you have not used the transform.



RESOLUTION
When installing Office on Windows Terminal Server, you must use a transform
(.mst file). The Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit provides a transform
called Termsrvr.mst. You must specify this transform using a command-line
switch during Setup. To install Office on a Windows Terminal Server, follow
these steps:

Click Start , point to Settings , and click Control Panel .


In Control Panel, double-click the Add/Remove Programs icon. Click Install ,
and then click Next .


Click Browse .


In the root folder of Office Disc 1, click to select Setup.exe and click OK
.

Setup.exe is added to the Command line for installation program box.


In the Command line for installation program box, append the following
parameter after Setup.exe, separated by a space:
TRANSFORMS=" path :\TermSrvr.mst"
where path is the location of the .mst file. This command identifies the
Terminal Server transform to use during installation.


Click Next .


In the Change User Options dialog box, select All users begin with common
application settings , and then click Next .


Type your customer information, and the click Next .


Accept the End User License Agreement, and then click Next .


Click Install Now .


When prompted, restart the computer and log back on to Windows as the same
user to allow Office 2000 Setup to complete successfully.


NOTE : You can download ORKTools.exe, a self-extracting executable file
containing TermSrvr.mst, from online services. Download this file from the
following Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2000/download/ORKTools.exe




REFERENCES
For more information about installing Office on a Windows Terminal Server,
check the Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit . You can also get more
information from the Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit Web page at:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2000
 
We have Office published on our farm on the same server JDE is installed.
We also have a separate server with only Excel (we added some VB for
spreadsheet control).

The main issue is when they do an export, they forget they are using the
"Citrix" excel and not the local excel. User's just need a little
training to save the spreadsheet to their local or network drive rather
then the Citrix drives.

My JDE Citrix server is an IBM 5000, but we've got this working on a test
basis using a Pentium III PC.



sue
Xe, sp18.1 update 3 (update 4 in test)
NT 4 sp6a, Oracle 8.1.6
 
Jeff, you have helped me immensely. I am going to forward your comments to
my server team. Thank you sooo much!!

:) Lori




Lori
OW Xe SP16 Update 2
AS400 V5R1 NT
Citrix
email: [email protected]
 
I want to thank everyone that replied to this post. We are discussing the
answers you all gave,

thanks!!!






Lori
OW Xe SP16 Update 2
AS400 V5R1 NT
Citrix
email: [email protected]
 
Re: RE: Anyone published Office products on Citrix servers?

You are absolutely right. You have to use the .mst file when you do an Office 2K installation. But actually you want to use it because then you can disable some of the crap like clippy and other 'features'.

Office XP does not have this I believe. It is terminal services aware from the beginning so you can do it all from the standard installation. No first hand experience with this version on terminal services though.

If you, for some reason, are installing Office 97 there is no .mst file there either because they didn't have such a thing at that point in time. Then you have to use the application compatibility scripts and not install some of the 'features' that aren't very friendly with terminal services.

Lori:
For more in-depth citrix help I would recommend http://www.thethin.net which is the portal for a yahoo group of over 3000 citrix users. Very good resource and the archives are excellent. Or you can always ask more here as long as it stays on topic such as JDE/Excel interoperability in a citrix environment. If you've got some off-topic questions try thethin.net or email me off-list and I'll try and help you out.

Good luck,
Jeff

B73.3.2 SP11.1,NT,MS-SQL7 SP2
WIN2K/CTX 1.8a SP2/FR1 & Fat (LIVE)

XE-U4 SP 18_B1,Win2K SP2,MS-SQL2K
WIN2K/CTX 1.8a SP2/FR1 & Fat (TEST)
 
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