Citrix to Web for 8.10 and higher - opinions?

We are considering upgrading to the current version of OW but are just in the discussion stage. We currently use Citrix to access XE, but would like in the future to remove this layer and use the web access that is standard to the later versions of OW. However, we have heard rumors that some shops using the higher releases of OW are still using Citrix to access the web client and we need to know if this is the case, and if so, why? Are there issues or limitation with the straight web access? Are their benefits to using Citrix to Web? I would be grateful if anyone could share their experiences! Thanks in advance.

I'm sure you'll receive a few responses/comments on this subject, but here are my thoughts. This is not an all inclusive list:

Publishing the web client via Citrix offers at least the following benefits:

Centralized Browser Administration- no need to worry about browser plugins and toolbars getting in the way...IT can lock the servers down but keep the desktops open (if they choose).

Performance - older machines (even Pentium 4 2.8 GHz machines) tend to be a bit sluggish when dealing with large amounts of grid data. Reportedly much better with 8.97 - but we'll have to wait and see.

Performance - WAN - slower Frame Relay circuits common in many remote office setups may not perform as well when JDE is run on the desktop browser. Citrix transmits a minimum of Keyboard/Video/Mouse (additional options like audio aren't very important for JDE).

Convenience - if you use Citrix for VPN access through a firewall, you can publish applications and provide the user with a single URL to bookmark/add to their favorites.

Security - lots of points to make here, but ICA can be secured with RSA encryption. SSL is good - but can be cracked. You can use two factor authentication with Citrix Secure Gateway for additional security. Additional layer of security more than anything else.

There are of course negatives associated to the Citrix approach, including lack of official Oracle support for this method, some users dislike the Citrix experience, latency can be an issue even over "fat pipes", etc., but for the most part it is a good tool to have in your arsenal.

Charles,

That's a nice, well thought out list. Spiderbaby, do some digging in the JDElist archives. This topic has been discussed several times.

Gregg

Thanks Gregg - I tried searching the JDELIST archives but wasn't able to find good hits...perhaps I wasn't using the ideal search terms. I'll try again. Thanks!

<font color="blue"> </font> While Citrix remains a viable current solution, the bottom line is this - the good old venerable fat/full client is on the way out, E812 on Tools Release 8.96 and higher will be presented to the clients only via a web client running off of either a Java Application (JAS) server running either Oracle Transaction Server JAS software (Red Stack nickname) or IBM WebSphere 5/6 (Blue Stack nickname) and this simply the way it is going. I have a client who loved the Citrix solution so much that they made the strategic decision to go with the highest flavor of EnterpriseOne (at the time of implementation) that would STILL run off their Citrix server farm. They went with E810 on the apps side and 8.95 on the tools release foundation side. We've quite successfully implemented E810 in the Windows SQL world running across 4 apps servers and 6 JAS servers still running on WebSphere 5 with tools Release 9.96. Next year we will begin moving off of the windows world and SQL2000 and on to the red stack on linux with Oracle 10g or higher on the backend.

It all comes down to your target implementation size (hundreds of users or thousands), availability required failover/disaster/uptime - 24/7 or a 6 hour maintenance window on Sunday night, for example. You need a short term, mid term and long term plan or you just might paint yourselves into the corner and face big $$$ to get to where you should have planned to go from the beginning. Also, on this site we're still maintaining good ole Xe on an older division of our company but are going to fold that into E810. Hope this also helps. <font color="blue"> </font>

Looks like you've missed the point of the question, which is should a customer consider the web client hosted by Citrix servers. 8.10 can run both, as you mentioned, but the poster would like to move to web client regardless.

We are on 8.10, 8.9.5.M1 and there is a major issue supporting languages on the web for this tools release. Hence, we have the US running web but all 5 of our EU operations running Citrix. To resolve this means upgrading our tools release, our WebSphere instance, some operating system components, then a reinstall of JDE web (as there is no 'upgrade'). As this is no small endevor, we cherrish our Citrix servers at the moment. We have long term plans to phase them out, but with my current company, these will drag out. We are running 2 production citrix boxes to support approx 100 people.

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Looks like you've missed the point of the question, which is should a customer consider the web client hosted by Citrix servers. 8.10 can run both, as you mentioned, but the poster would like to move to web client regardless.

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I'm going to weigh in here.

Realistically you want to do whatever works. Certainly using citrix to publish Internet Explorer is an expensive solution - but if it is less expensive than beefing up your network, sending technicians to constantly clean up a desktop's browser environment or providing encryption to prevent hackers from being able to identify financial information across the network - then its a viable solution.

I am a huge proponent of the Win32 environment. I think JDE/PSFT/ORCL have drunk the coolaid when it comes to pushing customers to a web client without providing a backup client. The web client is still buggy today - and certainly doesn't provide the functionality or the reliability of a Win32 client under citrix. Sure, its the "way of the future" - but its a dark future indeed if it scares away existing customers.

Oracle is interested in purely new customers - so it doesn't really matter to those users. New users will not know any difference when it comes to the comparisons between Win32 and HTML - but the harder sale is to the existing customer base who are predominantly Win32. When you take functionality away from a user, its a really bad thing.

As we move towards EnterpriseOne 9.0 - we'll see a shift towards the Oracle products more and more. However, the previous posters comments about drinking the redstack and jumping from SQL to Oracle makes little sense to me - unless they're already predominantly an Oracle house and have huge amounts of experience with Unix (which begs the question - why implement on NT/SQL in the first place?!). Walking into a customer and trying to change the platform from one type to another because of a whim or because it helps your resume is a bad bad idea. People have been fired for less.

Finally - don't diss the Citrix hosting the web browser solution until you try it. Citrix is very very good over low-bandwidth, medium latency networks - and users need to know that they can reliably connect and get their transactions posted.

sorry Jon for reviving this post after so many days. I am not technically savvy but i can see the problems we are facing today. We had (unwisely) decided to jump the gun and go in for the web client 4 yrs ago for our ERP 8.0 implementation and have been suffering ever since. Moving to Win32 is not an option now anyway.

In 2008 we plan to upgrade to 8.12. I have the rare chance to do things right the second time round. We use Windows operating systems on our enterprise & web servers and already use Oracle database. Our app server is IBM websphere. This configuration today is far from stable. We have system down-times almost every 2 weeks. The message i have got from droves of tech consultants is that a windows box is inherently unstable, and is especially so in our configuration.
Would we achieve superior uptime if we moved from Windows to Unix given that we already run Oracle DB and that oracle touts its database stability on unix?

Also should we consider moving away from IBM websphere to Oracle App server considering the support will be less complicated?

your suggestions are highly appreciated.

Best regards
Shrikanth

Where are you seeing the instability? We sound to have a similar configuration and any instances of instability are usually directly traceable to a real cause. We restart web application servers each night to avoid problems with memory leaks but app servers and their services stay running for many weeks if left alone (they get stopped for package deployments) and the database will stay up until you stop it to apply an ORACLE patch set.

I would be interested in knowing your entire architecture and what you really mean by downtime. We support 3 different instances (2 are XE, 1 is 8.12) all on the web. I have seen one instance support up to 1300 users at month end on 4 HTML boxes with 3 JVM's apiece. My initial thoughts without knowing your architecture tell me your system is tuned incorrectly across the jas.ini, jde.ini, websphere, and httpd conf files. If your system is not tuned, you could be running out of memory, threads, could be CPU bound etc.

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We had (unwisely) decided to jump the gun and go in for the web client 4 yrs ago for our ERP 8.0 implementation and have been suffering ever since.

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I have been involved with ERP 8.0 customers that were "sold" the web interface back in 2003 - obviously it was the direction that JDE/Peoplesoft were moving towards - but at great expense to the reliability of the customer. These days, the web interface is substantially more tested before it gets pushed to the customer - but back then I had HUGE arguments with JDE and other colleagues about using web at live customers since it hadn't been fully QA'd or tested internally.

Anyway - thats my little rant over.

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In 2008 we plan to upgrade to 8.12. I have the rare chance to do things right the second time round.


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You must have a customer with great vision to see past the issues over the past 4 years. I'm glad - many customers would have dumped JDE - probably filed a few lawsuits and jumped the boat. Glad to see that your customer is actively looking at 8.12.

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We use Windows operating systems on our enterprise & web servers and already use Oracle database. Our app server is IBM websphere. This configuration today is far from stable. We have system down-times almost every 2 weeks. The message i have got from droves of tech consultants is that a windows box is inherently unstable, and is especially so in our configuration.


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Bullcrap.

The "drove" of technical consultants (no doubt from some big-5 partner that has an inherent interest with hardware supply) are all talking out of their collective rear ends. When someone says "well, windows is inherently unstable and therefore thats the reason everything is crashing" - thats someone who needs to go and find a new job in my opinion. And certainly someone who shouldn't be touching a Wintel platformed customer.

Yes, Windows doesn't handle memory leaks as well as other operating systems. However the issue isn't the fact that the OS can handle the memory leak - its the fact theres a memory leak in the first place (which can ONLY come from the software being run on the platform). I've seen windows machines run certain versions of OneWorld "inherently" more reliably than the other platforms - it all depends on the service pack release at the time and some luck.

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Would we achieve superior uptime if we moved from Windows to Unix given that we already run Oracle DB and that oracle touts its database stability on unix?


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Maybe - but you'll now be in the minority. Remember, the issue is NOT the database stability here (at least I certainly hope not) - the database should be completely stable on the windows platform and moving it to unix is not going to help one iota there. The application servers should also be relatively stable - again, that is dependent on the service pack level for JDE. However, the JAS server might be where you see the largest variance - dependent on the SDK level of Java being used, the version and type of JAS service - the factors are pretty substantial at that point.

You need to really stress test your configuration before you deploy it to 1300 users. Luckily, stress testing a JAS environment is actually a lot easier to test that under a Win32 environment - I can certainly help you guys point towards a good set of tools and if needed a benchmark for stress testing your configuration. However, you really need someone that will isolate WHERE the issue really lies, and fights tooth and nail with JDE support until they get rid of a memory leak or instability in their product.

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Also should we consider moving away from IBM websphere to Oracle App server considering the support will be less complicated?


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This might be a good option to test in the stress test. OAS is nicer to set up compared to websphere, and if you don't necessarily have the websphere skills inhouse - then the fact that OAS is also a product that comes from the same supplier as your software - that might make a huge difference in support.

I certainly hope that my views and opinions help somewhat. Don't change everything to unix overnight (thats a pretty darn expensive option). If you wish, since you're an oracle database customer - you could always set up a couple of redhat boxes to test the stability, performance and scalability of the linux version (which I like personally - its a lot cheaper to try out linux) - but unless you CLEARLY see some major stability differences, you really should stick with the platform you are technically most comfortable with.

hi john, unfortunately i am the customer. when i said we have been suffering i really meant me I must admit that i have thought about dumping JDE a few times. Since i have a little Oracle EBS background, some functionality comparisons such as intrinsic workflow and business rules engine make me wish for the green grass on the other side. But maybe i wont get to do this switch hence upgrade to 8.12 is my only salvation

From your experience can you suggest which SP of 8.12 is the most stable from a technical perspective?

We have a relatively small installation with just 250 named users. Yet we find that we cant handle large sql queries well. We recently had database disconnection issues that were traced to a memory allocation setting in boot.ini. The ES CPU performance maxes out from time to time causing slower response times. Hence there seems to be something going on in the database. basically we need the DB to be tuned well for the OS it is running on. Hence i was hoping that this tuning would be more standard on a redhat-oracle installation.

i shall certainly take you up on the offer to recommend tools and benchmarks. Thanks for the offer.

Since we dont have internal expertise it will be difficult for me to install some boxes on linux and test. Our upgrade project will be done by external consultants hence we need to decide the technology before the implementation starts. So how about a redhat-oracle, redhat-JAS, redhat-OAS configuration?

There is some linux exposure within my team. i guess what we dont know about JDE running on windows is as much as what we dont know about JDE running on linux. so not much to chose from!

I know its a drastic change from our current setup, but its not that i am coming from a stable setup in the first place. If i can sort out my support well, is this a viable option? Why do i need windows boxes in my setup at all?

i thought it was significant to have gotten a slight positive response to the OAS suggestion from you. i think if i can sort out my support well, thats where i should go

Thanks a lot John for all your comments. they have been extremely useful. I shall hope to share more in the near future.

best regards
shrek

Sorry to here about the issues. If possible try and find a partner who knows both JDE and hardware. We do both and it works well. I go in do the SAN, Blade, VM and JDE upgrade. We're also authorized as a sizing center and Oracle training facility.

8.12 is pretty stable and faster as long as you have good hardware. I can suggest a million configs and others can suggest a million more.

Since you're on Oracle you're likely famaliar with it so stay there. Try a separate DB server (2 way dual core, 8 GB RAM) and a separate Enterprise (App)Server (2 way dual core, 8 GB RAM). Put both on a SAN. The Web Server can also be 2 way dual core 8 GB but doesn't need to be on the SAN.

This config will fly!

I've got many happy customers runnign with a lot less with just as many users.

As for the Linux stuff..........well who's using it (invite to holy war)? Stick with the majority.

Colin

hi colin

thanks for your information. I shall certainly keep this config in mind. one thing you said struck a chord. Stick with the majority. the last time we decided to be mavericks and it didnt go so well. sticking with the majority hence sounds sensible. What config are the majority of 8.12 oracle installations on? which webserver, which operating system? i guess thats the only missing piece. The DB is fixed as oracle & the hardware config is probably like you mentioned.

Does it matter which vendor we get servers from?

best regards
shrek

The biggest issue I come across when moving from Win32 to Web is user resistance to the shortcomings of the web interface. Admittedly it's getting better with some major improvements in 8.95 and hopefully more in 8.97.
As for Linux...sorry Colin, but it kicks ass in terms of TCO and performance. I worked with all thinkable config's and I have not seen anything quicker. With 64-bit support on the horizon it is also a solution that can scale to support the larger customers. I have worked with clients with 8.11SP/WebSphere/DB2 UDB and 8.12/OAS/Oracle 10GR2 and it flies and is extemely stable. So watch out Colin

Agreed. If you want to see JDE "fly" and run on a unix platform at speeds that would break your neck, run it on linux. As for "who's running it" - well, Oracle has unbreakable linux for that.

Actually, linux is relatively new - but it has quickly become a popular application server for unix shops that don't want to spend too much money on their proprietary hardware supplier for application servers. I'd certainly say that the "traditional" unix server platforms or even win32 are still the better option for an oracle database server.

But, if you haven't tried JDE under linux - don't mock it. If configured and managed correctly, it kicks butt, and its incredibly reliable too.