Best Practices--Access 7 on Metaframe 1.8

[jc64]

I have a Best Practices question here with all input appreciated. We have a pair of load-balanced Metaframe 1.8/NT4TS servers. Currently there are about 35 active users total running the Oracle 10.7 (16bit) client. There are also several users who run Access Run-time apps during the day. CPU averages about 50% on each dual-CPU server. Office 97 is loaded on the server. Currently, nobody runs any of the Office apps thru Citrix. A user is now asking me to publish the full version of Access so he can run queries, etc. remotely. (stuff he can't do using the run-time version)

Now I know I *can* set him up to do this, but should I? I'm slightly concerned about the bloat of the Office apps on the server and what some of his queries could do to performance. Are my concerns justified or should I set it and forget it?

TIA
JC64

 

[CitrixEngineer]

It really depends on the build of the servers - how much RAM, what speed and type the processors are, what disk configuration, etc.

I would have guessed that, with only 35 users on a pair of dual processor machines of almost any spec you should be OK - my main concerns would be with Oracle, which I have always found to be a resource-hungry monster.

How much Access consumes, in terms of resources, is down to the individual database - a copy needs to be held open for each user, so if the DB is 50Mb, that's a lot of resources.

The best way to find out is on a test server (see my FAQs ), running perfmon.

I hope this helps