Those of you that are using Citrix for SBC...

[thewlis]

...what made you choose it over vanilla Terminal Services or any other product?

 

I'm looking at implementing wireless thin clients at our school. We need more PCs, but have no space, so a laptop/trolley situation is unfortunately inevitable.

 

We have a 2950 running Server 2008 and I've set up Terminal Services on there. I'd expect this to handle 30 or so TS connections with no problem.

 

So the question is, what does Citrix actually offer here? We're going to need the whole desktop to run on the server, not just applications, so does that mean XenDesktop VDI is my only option? Faffing around with desktop images and the like seems unnecessary for our situation.

 

I'm led to believe that ICA handles quick-moving content (flash etc) a lot better than RDP, is there much credence to this? At the moment this is the only thing I can see that lets TS down, and there's talk of improvements in this department with Server 2008 R2.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Ric_]

Firstly, forget about XenDesktop... you would need XenApp.

 

Some of the advantages:

• More leightweight protocol
  
• Better multimedia support
  
• Advanced loadbalancing capabilities
  
• Better management tools
  
• More control over the end user experience
  
• Excellent remote access using Secure Gateway
  

 

Of course there are other (cheaper) options too. I suggest you look at Sun Global Desktop (Andy at the Cutter project aka Linescanner can help you out) and maybe look at the Tadpole mobile Sun Rays.

 

Citrix XenApp is a brilliant product but it's not the cheapest. If you aren't ever going to use the load balancing or remote features then it isn't for you. I love it though!

[thewlis]

Thanks for your reply,

 

All the promotional blurb I read about XenApp suggests that end user boots their client to a local desktop, but then can use server-hosted apps as if they were local.

 

What we need is for the entire desktop to be hosted on the server (for things like mapped network drives) as students will be accessing the server from XPe thin clients, their personal laptops, and eventually from home. Does XenApp differ from TS at all in this scenario?

[Butuz]

You can do what you need to do with what you have. Just need to configure your Win2k8 server as a Terminal Server , buy the approprate client licences, and set up GPO's etc to lock it down so that the kids can't do anything they shouldnt whilst they are logged onto the server.

 

Then all you do is point each XPE client at the Terminal Server via an RDP session and set it to be the default. Whenever a XPE client boots up it should go straight into the full screen RDP session.

 

Citrix is great, and indeed I want it when I get some more money - but vanilla terminal services will do what you need for almost free (£8 per client licence).

 

Butuz