Thin client and web server

[Roger Breakell]

Are any of you clever people using thin clients with citrix to access the EnterpriseOne web client? We currently use citrix to access XE 'fat client' and are having to move to web client!! We are considering publishing Internet Explorer on our citrix servers and accessing the web server via this published application. Questions? Is this a good idea? Is anyone doing this now? Thanks for your feedback.

 

[sashton]

I guess I don't understand why you would want to do this? Accessing a thin client from a thin client? Are the end-users workstations so slow that they can't even have Internet Explorer on them? Otherwise, what would be the benefit of having them access IE through a Citrix session?

 

[gregglarkin]

Why would you want to access an ultrathin client (web) through a very thin client (citrix)? There is no real advantage and you would not realize the savings on citrix licenses. We are running a solution like you are suggesting for a java based application. The only reason why we are doing that is that the java based app (for expense reporting) is a thick and tempermental application that requires a very specific java run-time. The JDE/Peoplesoft webclient is very thin and does not push a java client out to the end-users. We have had people access our web servers from the other side of the planet with no issues. So far no interplanetry users yet, but I'm sure I'll see that in time.

Gregg Larkin
PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne System Administrator
Praxair, Inc.

 

[cmanderson]

This is actually not a bad idea given certain circumstances. If you have a lot of remote locations running over slow WAN links, Citrix would be a good way to host the web client. Think about the costs involved in upgrading and maintaining your IP infrastructure and compare it to the Citrix licensing costs. You may find there are a couple of places where your bandwidth could suffer. One of them is viewing PDF's remotely. If you download a 250MB PDF (or even bigger!) from your Enterprise server over, over a web client it's going to follow the network path straight to your PC. If you are in some remote warehouse with nothing but ISDN - that may be a very bad thing, especially if you are sharing the overall bandwidth with other users.

The Citrix servers would naturally exist in a shared location with the enterprise servers and thus you would have a much quicker experience and it would all occur over your LAN. Think about a number of other issues facing IT departments. PC's are getting faster but the software is not catching up with it. There is less reason than ever to continually upgrade a PC to the latest and greatest. You have management burden overhead involved with keeping remote PC's and servers backed up and you will naturally send technicians to those remote locations more often when rotating devices fail. If you can replace your PC's with true thin-client devices from companies like NCD you may benefit. It may eliminate employees from the payroll but that is one of the highest costs companies face. The cost of a renewable license may be much less. Think about how many Citrix servers you have running a fat client - especially Solution Explorer. You may get 25 users on a 2X4 server. If you host IE sessions on the same Citrix server you may quadruple that number. Naturally the number of servers may fluctuate depending on how much you consolidate to Citrix.

 

[shearerj]

There is performance benefit running IE through Citrix when WAN links are involved. See the Terminal Server graph line in the attached spreadsheet.

 

[altquark]

Hey Jeremy - can you attach that spreadsheet for us !

There is a reason for doing this - although it is expensive, you can HEAVILY restrict the Internet Explorer options using policy editing and management - thereby not preventing users from doing whatever they want through their local IE settings - but ensuring that the users are very limited to their OneWorld system settings.

Management of the Internet Explorer client is a logistical nightmare - almost to the verge of having to maintain fat clients out there all over again. With users installing spyware, going to web sites and downloading hot-button software - we're back in the situation with the JAS solution of opening MASSIVE security holes as well as having to maintain precise and limited use of the Internet Explorer security settings.

The internet is becoming a darker place. Almost every single day I manage to somehow get some sort of tracking cookie or some sort of spyware installed - and I use Spybot S&D as well as Ad-aware. The problem is, of course, that spyware is being published far faster than anti-spyware can handle it, and it only takes a very simple background script to be developed on a website to literally slam a hole directly into your OneWorld data and gain access directly to proprietary information and financials.

I published a paper called "Hacking OneWorld" that goes somewhat down a path of securing OneWorld in these regards - but I think this needs to be expanded upon with regards to Spyware.

I know I went a little off-topic on this - but managing Internet Explorer through Citrix isn't as far fetched as you might imagine, given the potential expense of losing all your financial data to some unknown source...