citrix and windows 2000 terminal services on clients --- do we need to buy

  • Thread starter JDE_Team_Unilab
  • Start date

JDE_Team_Unilab

Member
hello list.

in planning for our one world xe migration, our hardware vendor is
suggesting that we use citrix metaframe on all our clients (out of around
150, 135 will be on the lan and 15 will be remote). as quoted, we will be
needing to install windows 2000 client access licenses to all clients, and
in addition, we need to buy an equivalent number of citrix client licenses.

we are not convinced that we need to have both the windows client access
(windows terminal services) and citrix on the client machines.

has anyone have any experience on this? kindly enghten us.

thank you very much.

melo portugal
united laboratories
manila, philippines
 
Don't buy into that BS that you MUST have all TSE clients. This is just an
excuse not to have to keep the code base in shape. Also remember that if
you approach it this way you are back to a single point of failure - kind of
defeats the purpose of having software that supports distributive
processing. My feeling is that more companies are more comfortable putting
fat clients down than TSEs.

If you have the budget to pay an additional $250 US for each thin client
user (on top of the cost for a fat client), then go for it. If you don't
want to make Bill and the folks richer at CTX, use as many fat clients as
you need to.


>From: JDE_Team_Unilab <[email protected]>
>Reply-To: [email protected]
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: citrix and windows 2000 terminal services on clients --- do we
>need to buy ~~0:2299
>Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 00:13:12 -0800 (PST)
>
>hello list.
>
>in planning for our one world xe migration, our hardware vendor is
>suggesting that we use citrix metaframe on all our clients (out of around
>150, 135 will be on the lan and 15 will be remote). as quoted, we will be
>needing to install windows 2000 client access licenses to all clients, and
>in addition, we need to buy an equivalent number of citrix client licenses.
>
>we are not convinced that we need to have both the windows client access
>(windows terminal services) and citrix on the client machines.
>
>has anyone have any experience on this? kindly enghten us.
>
>thank you very much.
>
>melo portugal
>united laboratories
>manila, philippines
>
>
>
>
>--------------------------
>To view this thread, visit the JDEList forum at:
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Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
 
Melo,
Make sure you consider that fat clients are significantly more work to maintain than thin clients. I spend the extra money.
dave


NT 4.0 SP5, SQL 7.0, One World B7321 SP12.4
 
I think you've already got the answer, but just to put it together:
1. For your LAN users you can simply use 1W fat clients
2. If you use both Citrix and Win2000, you'll need two licenses for each
client. But you may just stay with Win2000 in terminal mode. Performance
will be slightly worse, you won't have all those fancy Citrix features, and
bandwidth requirement is higher (I've heard 8 kbps instead of 4 kbps,
figures are approximate), but you save the cost of Citrix.

I don't know you're configuration, but I would suggest having 135 fat
clients (128 Mb RAM minimum) and 15 simple Win2000 terminal clients. If you
find performance is not acceptable, you can always buy Citrix or upgrade
your network.

Regards,
Vladimir Ponomarev
 
Hello Melo,

I was one of the people responsible for introducing Citrix and Terminal Server to JD Edwards - and my name is on many of the whitepapers that are on the Knowledge Garden for Terminal Server benchmarking and testing.

Citrix is important. Much more so than others in this forum think. The FAT Client technology performs perfectly ok on a local area network - very close to the Enterprise Server - but it does NOT perform across any sort of WAN. See my whitepaper entitled "WAN and Distributed CNC Architecture" - dated 1997 on the JDE Knowledge Garden.

Terminal Server is a technology that allows multiple Windows sessions to run on a single machine. Screenshots and keyboard strokes are streamed across the network connection. Citrix built this technology for Microsoft and MS introduced it initially with Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition. It is now part of Windows 2000 Server.

The RDP protocol used by Microsoft, however, is not as efficient and as easy to manage as the Citrix ICA protocol. The reasons for this are obvious - Citrix left several holes in the product that they could fill so as not to bankrupt themselves. A number of whitepapers exist on the knowledge garden including "ICA vs RDP" by Bernard Douthit - dated 1998

I believe that 90% of PRODUCTION OneWorld users (not development users or 'POWER' users) run using a thin-client technology of some sort or another for WAN connectivity. Since Java/HTML client is relatively new and has not been deployed widely - I am forced to conclude that almost all these users now run on Citrix/Terminal Server connections.

As a reply to hotm6654 - you are correct - it may be an excuse not to keep the code base in shape - but it works. Your other comments about a "single point of failure" obviously shows a lack of knowledge of JD Edwards CNC architecture and the complementary architecture that Citrix provides. With TSE alone - it certainly provides single points of failures - but with Citrix Loadbalancing, there is NO single point of failure - especially with nFuse.

More people are comfortable deploying clients with 4gb space for each user than a couple of floppies for Citrix ? If I have 100 workstations that need access to OneWorld - without Citrix I have to deploy 400Gb of client code AND I have to try and keep it working. With Citrix I deploy 2 terminal servers - and 8Gb of code (4gb ea). The workstations can then access the Citrix Terminal Server through a browser !

Melo - do not make the mistake that hotm6654 is obviously making currently - deploy Citrix from scratch and you will guarantee both performance and Total Cost of Ownership advantages.

Jon Steel
Chief Technologist
ERP Sourcing LLC
(303) 883 9168
email : [email protected]

Jon Steel                                       
Xe Upgrade Specialist - AppzBiz
 
No, there IS a single point of failure because you have to put all of your
users in a farm. I know because we are doing it today for over a l00 local
and remote users.

Now, you have two servers with 50 users on each. You have a server load of
50 people that have to move over to the other server while one is down for
maintenance. Tell me that the current 50 users aren't going to notice the
additional 50 users in terms of performance. Unless you have a good backup
server (about $25000), you are on a single point of failure.

What I was referring to as "a single point of failure" is in terms of code.
If the code is no good (app problem, service packs, etc), you have a server
that is no good. You can't check objects out on a TSE while people are
using it. With 50 fat clients, you have one or two users that cannot work.
My point is that TSE proponents want to put everyone on TSE because they
can't manage the code base. My point to Melo is that Local users (and I did
not say remote users) DO NOT HAVE to be TSE users just because a consultant
says so. 75% of consultants say this because they cannot manage the code
base when the software is initially installed. It is not because it
functions better and is certainly not because it cheaper or easier to
support long term.

I have worked on over 30 different OneWorld installs and I have absolutely
no idea where you got the crazy idea that 90% of OneWorld users (non-power
users / no-developers) use this client. This is simply not true. Maybe
25%, maybe a third, but definitely not 90%.






----- Original Message -----
From: "altquark" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2000 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: citrix and windows 2000 terminal services on clients --- do we
need to buy ~~2299:2493


> Hello Melo,
>
> I was one of the people responsible for introducing Citrix and Terminal
Server to JD Edwards - and my name is on many of the whitepapers that are on
the Knowledge Garden for Terminal Server benchmarking and testing.
>
> Citrix is important. Much more so than others in this forum think. The
FAT Client technology performs perfectly ok on a local area network - very
close to the Enterprise Server - but it does NOT perform across any sort of
WAN. See my whitepaper entitled "WAN and Distributed CNC Architecture" -
dated 1997 on the JDE Knowledge Garden.
>
> Terminal Server is a technology that allows multiple Windows sessions to
run on a single machine. Screenshots and keyboard strokes are streamed
across the network connection. Citrix built this technology for Microsoft
and MS introduced it initially with Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition.
It is now part of Windows 2000 Server.
>
> The RDP protocol used by Microsoft, however, is not as efficient and as
easy to manage as the Citrix ICA protocol. The reasons for this are
obvious - Citrix left several holes in the product that they could fill so
as not to bankrupt themselves. A number of whitepapers exist on the
knowledge garden including "ICA vs RDP" by Bernard Douthit - dated 1998
>
> I believe that 90% of PRODUCTION OneWorld users (not development users or
'POWER' users) run using a thin-client technology of some sort or another
for WAN connectivity. Since Java/HTML client is relatively new and has not
been deployed widely - I am forced to conclude that almost all these users
now run on Citrix/Terminal Server connections.
>
> As a reply to hotm6654 - you are correct - it may be an excuse not to keep
the code base in shape - but it works. Your other comments about a "single
point of failure" obviously shows a lack of knowledge of JD Edwards CNC
architecture and the complementary architecture that Citrix provides. With
TSE alone - it certainly provides single points of failures - but with
Citrix Loadbalancing, there is NO single point of failure - especially with
nFuse.
>
> More people are comfortable deploying clients with 4gb space for each user
than a couple of floppies for Citrix ? If I have 100 workstations that need
access to OneWorld - without Citrix I have to deploy 400Gb of client code
AND I have to try and keep it working. With Citrix I deploy 2 terminal
servers - and 8Gb of code (4gb ea). The workstations can then access the
Citrix Terminal Server through a browser !
>
> Melo - do not make the mistake that hotm6654 is obviously making
currently - deploy Citrix from scratch and you will guarantee both
performance and Total Cost of Ownership advantages.
>
> Jon Steel
> Chief Technologist
> ERP Sourcing LLC
> (303) 883 9168
> email : [email protected]
>
> Jon Steel
> Xe Upgrade Specialist - AppzBiz
>
> --------------------------
> Visit the forum to view this thread at:
>
http://198.144.193.139/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=OW&Number=2
493
> *************************************************************
> This is the JDEList One World / XE Mailing List.
> Archives and information on how to SUBSCRIBE, and
> UNSUBSCRIBE can be found at http://www.JDELIST.com
> *************************************************************
>
>
 
Just to add more confusion to the mix here are some of my thoughts.

In the Fall of 1999 we went live on B733 cum 1. We set up all our LAN users with fat clients and all our WAN users with Citrix. To do this we had to update about 100+ machines with 128meg of ram and 7 to 10gb hard drives. Now if we want to go to XE we are going to have to update all our fat clients to 256meg of ram and possibly larger hard drives. Using thin clients on the LAN may have saved us more when (or if) we go to XE.

That is my 2 cents, take it for what it is worth.

P.S. You guys (or girls hotm6654 really doesn't show gender) play nice now! Remember everyone has there own opinion.

Chad Anderson
Generac Portable Products L.L.C.
B733.1 AS400 Ent NT SQL Deploy
 
For the record, I am androgynous. (;~)

I have seen XE requirements and the minimum tech requirements is 128 MB of
RAM for fat client. The fat client (w/o) development objects is 1.34 GB.
So you should not need to upgrade. If your fat client runs ok on B733.1
w/128 MB now, you will be OK with XE.




----- Original Message -----
From: "Chad_Anderson" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 9:08 AM
Subject: Re: citrix and windows 2000 terminal services on clients --- do we
need to buy ~~2299:2593


> Just to add more confusion to the mix here are some of my thoughts.
>
> In the Fall of 1999 we went live on B733 cum 1. We set up all our LAN
users with fat clients and all our WAN users with Citrix. To do this we had
to update about 100+ machines with 128meg of ram and 7 to 10gb hard drives.
Now if we want to go to XE we are going to have to update all our fat
clients to 256meg of ram and possibly larger hard drives. Using thin
clients on the LAN may have saved us more when (or if) we go to XE.
>
> That is my 2 cents, take it for what it is worth.
>
> P.S. You guys (or girls hotm6654 really doesn't show gender) play nice
now! Remember everyone has there own opinion.
>
> Chad Anderson
> Generac Portable Products L.L.C.
> B733.1 AS400 Ent NT SQL Deploy
> --------------------------
> Visit the forum to view this thread at:
>
http://198.144.193.139/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=OW&Number=2
593
> *************************************************************
> This is the JDEList One World / XE Mailing List.
> Archives and information on how to SUBSCRIBE, and
> UNSUBSCRIBE can be found at http://www.JDELIST.com
> *************************************************************
>
>
 
hotm and anyone interested.....

If you were originally around with OneWorld in 1996 & 1997 (as I was) - you would have remembered that OneWorld fat clients minimum tech requirements were 486 PC's with 24Mb RAM. Lets look over the past 4 years of minimum technical requirements with estimated costs for upgrades.....unfortunately I can only start from B7.1.4...but here goes - my G/A dates might be wrong btw:

Release, G/A Date, Processor, RAM, Hard Disk free, approx.upgrade cost
B7.1.4, 4/97, 486/66, 24mb, 500mb, $0
B7.3.1, 11/97, P90, 32mb, 500mb, $500
B7.3.2, 7/98, P90, 32mb, 750mb, $250
B7.3.3, 1/99, P100, 48mb, 1000mb, $500
B7.3.3.1, 8/99, P120, 64mb, 1000mb, $500
B7.3.3.2, 1/00, P120, 64mb, 1400mb, $250
Xe, 9/00, PII 233, 128mb, 1400mb, $500

Total time : 36 months
Total cost : $2,500 (PER machine) EXCLUDING people costs
Note : I have excluded purchase cost of the initial 486/66. All upgrade costs are estimated to values set at the time the upgrade was required. It is likely that if a new machine was required, the costs would have been substantially higher. In 1996 the top-of-the-range PC was a Pentium 120 and cost approximately $2500. Today the same price buys a top-of-the-range Pentium4 1.4Ghz machine.

Citrix minimum requirements : 486/66 with 24mb RAM, 10Mb Disk Free (works fine by the way)
Citrix Server costs (for about 3 years support):
Dual 750Mhz PIII, 2Gb RAM, 2 x 9Gb 10K RPM Drives (40 users) $12,000

lets suggest a site with 100 concurrent users (as example given)

Over the 3 years, the customer would have spent $250,000 on upgrading the Fat clients to ensure that they abide by minimum technical requirements.

For Citrix - the cost difference in hardware is 3 Citrix Servers = $36,000 - and this could handle 120 concurrent users for redundancy.

As for software costs - the only difference in software costs between the solutions are the Terminal Server CAL's for each user, as well as the Citrix Server costs (for 100 users, total additional software cost is ~$50,000 above the NT costs that are equal between both models)

Therefore - and I hope this point is well made - Fat Clients would have costed you $250,000 excluding labor - and the Citrix Solution would have costed you $86,000 excluding labor. Add into the mix labor costs (people running around upgrading 100 clients as apposed to 3 terminal servers) and the gap widens even more.

The client code stability is an aside note. It doesn't matter which client solution you choose - if the bug is in the client, you need to fix the bug. To deploy a fix to a bug with the fat client solution - you have to deploy 100 packages. With the Citrix solution you only have to deploy 3.

As for my data - 90% of JD Edwards OneWorld WAN connected users access OneWorld through a Citrix Solution. There are many larger customers (more than 1,000 users) that access OneWorld and see much larger cost benefits for manageability - smaller customers may be ok if theycan suffer the intolerable waits across WAN connections. Not only that, but smaller customers rarely have WAN issues. The only other solution would be replication to Workgroup Servers - a MUCH, MUCH higher cost than Fat client alone.

If you need any help in understanding cost implications for OneWorld Global Deployment, please do not hesitate in contacting me !

Jon Steel
Xe Upgrade Specialist
ERP Sourcing LLC
http://www.spla.sh
(303) 883 9168
[email protected]

Jon Steel                                       
Xe Upgrade Specialist - AppzBiz
 
RE: Citrix and windows 2000 terminal services on clients --- do we need to buy

Jon Steel,

In your calculations, you should also consider the upgrade cost of the
Citrix servers over the 3 year period. It is unlikely you could have
supported those forty users on the machines that were available at
that time and with the Citrix software as it existed at that time.

I think the difference in maintenance of the code base on the machines
does increase exponentially and Citrix certainly helps with that.
That dollar number is hard to quantify, but IS real..

I am enjoying the discussion and ideas presented in this thread, but
the statistician in me wants to keeps the apples and oranges sorted
properly.

David Ransdell
 
Re: RE: Citrix and windows 2000 terminal services on clients --- do we need to buy

"Could gore and Bush please stop fighting now." Oh, sorry I thought I was in a different e-mail list.

Did anyone notice that melo original question only asked if he should use both citrix and WTS or just WTS! Anyway I think everyone on this thread has made a good point. This is why I joined this list.

Good day to all

Chad Anderson
Generac Portable Products L.L.C.
B733.1 AS400 Ent NT SQL Deploy
 
Re: RE: Citrix and windows 2000 terminal services on clients --- do we need to buy

very true David - however Citrix Metaframe for NT 4.0 (and, in fact, Terminal Server Edition of NT4.0) was not available back then !

However, a Quad Pentium Pro 200MHz machine with 2Gb RAM from 3 years ago will still be "ok" today to run almost 40 users concurrently (as long as one maps off the Business Functions by using those JDE 'W' Environments) - and in fact most machines are phased out over 36 months. However, the cost of a Quad Pentium Pro 200Mhz machine with 2Gb RAM was around $30,000 back in 1997/1998 - so I do agree that it would have been more expensive. However, costs since the introduction of Terminal Server have significantly dropped - and more and more "server" class machines are being sold nowadays for a variety of reasons compared to 1997 (eCommerce use, Java Servlet use etc etc). It still comes nowhere close to the $250,000 cost of 100 fat workstation upgrades however !

Remember - the introduction of Terminal Server was to combat a very serious issue at JD Edwards - the chattiness of OneWorld across a WAN and to combat serious performance issues for WAN connected users - anything that comes from cost savings as far as manageability is concerned is a bonus.

With that in mind - Citrix should certainly be used on top of TSE alone becuase of the 60-70% performance difference across a highly latent WAN connection over TSE alone. See the earlier referenced document (RDP vs ICA) on the Knowledge Garden.

Hope that helps more !


Jon Steel                                       
Xe Upgrade Specialist - AppzBiz
 
Re: RE: Citrix and windows 2000 terminal services on clients --- do we need to buy

Point well taken.

However, Melo implied that he had 135 LOCAL users and he it was recommended
that he user TSE (and Citrix) for these users. My comments were directed at
his vendors recommendation to purchase hardware and software to support 135
thin clients.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Chad_Anderson" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 2:39 PM
Subject: Re: RE: Citrix and windows 2000 terminal service s on clients ---
do we need to buy ~~2299:2645


> "Could gore and Bush please stop fighting now." Oh, sorry I thought I was
in a different e-mail list.
>
> Did anyone notice that melo original question only asked if he should use
both citrix and WTS or just WTS! Anyway I think everyone on this thread has
made a good point. This is why I joined this list.
>
> Good day to all
>
> Chad Anderson
> Generac Portable Products L.L.C.
> B733.1 AS400 Ent NT SQL Deploy
> --------------------------
> Visit the forum to view this thread at:
>
http://198.144.193.139/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=OW&Number=2
645
> *************************************************************
> This is the JDEList One World / XE Mailing List.
> Archives and information on how to SUBSCRIBE, and
> UNSUBSCRIBE can be found at http://www.JDELIST.com
> *************************************************************
>
>
 
Re: RE: Citrix and windows 2000 terminal services on clients --- do we need to buy

I'm betting that more people learned more about TSE in
the last two days than possible if we limited our
discussions to opinion agreements.

Good discussion, keep it up guys.


"Honest disagreement is often a good sign of
progress."
Ghandi







--- Chad_Anderson <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Could gore and Bush please stop fighting now." Oh,
> sorry I thought I was in a different e-mail list.
>
> Did anyone notice that melo original question only
> asked if he should use both citrix and WTS or just
> WTS! Anyway I think everyone on this thread has
> made a good point. This is why I joined this list.
>
> Good day to all
>
> Chad Anderson
> Generac Portable Products L.L.C.
> B733.1 AS400 Ent NT SQL Deploy
> --------------------------
> Visit the forum to view this thread at:
>
http://198.144.193.139/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=OW&Number=2645
>
>
*************************************************************
> This is the JDEList One World / XE Mailing List.
> Archives and information on how to SUBSCRIBE, and
> UNSUBSCRIBE can be found at http://www.JDELIST.com
>
*************************************************************
>


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