Citrix - Pros and Cons

[LuckyTaxi]

I'm stuck in the middle of a heated debate. I started this job in the Fall of 2003. My co-worker decided to implement Citrix in the school's brand new computer lab. He managed to persuade both our boss and the computer teacher on the benefits of Citrix. It all seemed good and all and saved us a lot of money, but boy has it backed fire. Of course, me being the helpdesk guy, I'm stuck trying to learn this beast. Anyways, we have 30 thin clients (Windows CE). There are 3 servers (pretty old - Dual processor with atleast a 1GB of RAM). Here's where I think my co-worker fouled up pretty badly. He disregarded her lessons plan where she would need to run certain programs. Well, besides the major apps that would run correctly (MS Office and Quark), we have a half dozen programs that have no support for Citrix.

Obviously the computer teacher is pissed off since she can't run most of the programs she bought for her class. And my idiotic co-worker says she'll have to deal with it and has to find programs that support Citrix. Well, that's not so easy and now we may have to go with computers instead of thin clients. Why? Because programs such as Photoshop and Quark require A LOT of RAM and processing power. The servers we have aren't nearly as fast as the new ones that are out now.

Anyways, I just wanted to hear some other ppl's experiences with Citrix.

Cliffs -

1 - Co-worker implements Citrix w/o properly researching it
2 - Computer teacher has a half dozen program that arent compatible with Citrix
3 - I get bitched at for not knowing how to fix the issues. Co-worker sticks by his decision to run Citrix even though we have programs such as Photoshop and Quark that need dedicated systems in my opinion.

 

[ValuedCustomer]

wow.. not much to say.. sounds like your co-worker is a real toolbox. -- anywho, Citrix is an outstanding solution given proper planning, implementation and application. - how many clients are you needing to support?

 

[EatSpam]

Time to budget in a hw upgrade. Even a single dual core dual Opteron server with 8gb RAM would be an improvement over what you have and would probably give you enough to run Quark and Photoshop.

Like VC said, Citrix is a very cool, useful tool with proper implementation.

 

[LuckyTaxi]

We'll see what happens. Im going to ignore her plead for help and turn it in my co-workers face. He jumps into things w/o researching it properly. Here's his current dilemna. He purchased Zenworks and can't figure out how to use it. it doesnt work so he fdisk the PC he was working on twice, thinking it was the PC. He's still playing with it.

 

[Agamar]

I would advise not running Photoshop with anything less than a 2 server farm, with fast dual processors and 4 gigs of ram apiece. On top of that, you have to have a thin client that has a good video processor to keep the screen updates nice and fast. I found that Windows CE based thin clients are NOT what you want for antything with fast updating video. The NEOWARE thin clients ended up being my top choice, for both price and speed.

 

[jfunk]

Yeah. Educational software sucks. There's gonna be a ton of crap programs that people wind up wanting that aren't going to work on much of anything but a standard windows box. It's a real problem with trying to do anything alternative for computers in a k-12 environment these days.

j

 

[Linflas]

Originally posted by: ValuedCustomer
wow.. not much to say.. sounds like your co-worker is a real toolbox. -- anywho, Citrix is an outstanding solution given proper planning, implementation and application. - how many clients are you needing to support?

If his school computer lab is anything like the ones in my school he is talking about hammering the Citrix server with 30 simultaneous sessions each class all pretty much running the same stuff at the same time. I would think that would require some serious server side resources to support it.

 

[Agamar]

Believe it or not, Citrix is pretty efficient with most programs running at the same time. Especially considering the memory aspect. What will bring it down is network bandwidth and CPU usage. In fact, if you CPU usage is staying ~30%, you should think about getting another CPU(Or go quad, that is always good).

We run a full desktop from our Citrix farm that includes Office XP and a wide range of custom applications. We also support dial-in and WAN users via VPN. Best way to go is to get the best servers you can buy.