Looking for advice from Citrix Gurus

[KenIT]

Hi guys,
Hopefully some of you can lend some expertise to my plans. I have a dual 2.8 xeon server (dell 2600) with 3gig of memory and 10000 rpm scsi set up in RAID10 (0+1). We are running W2K server as a member server in an NT4 domain. I have already set the server up for terminal services in application mode and obviously made this server the licensing server (presently the only 2000 server in the network because of previous applications). I have ordered Citrix XPs (10 user) for remote application use of a single package that will be running on this server. In reality we will only have about 5 terminals accessing the application through Citrix over a full T1 network connection which will only be utilized by another 5 terminals connected to the network for email and file areas. By the way, the terminals connecting to the 2000 server will all be W2k so the 98 licensing problem should not be an issue. My question is ... Is there anything else I should concern myself with on the 2000 server before the Citrix install and are there any common Citrix problems I should be aware of before installing on the 2000 machine. This will be our for XPs install so this will be a fresh install. Any advice would be appreciated. By the way, I know Citrix may sound like overload for this purpose but because of some issues with TS printer redirection we are going with Citrix. Again, thanks guys in advance for sharing the knowledge.

KT

 

[ahalecitrix]

Printers, printers printers.... always a worth while excuse to use Citrix!

I think you'll find that the Citrix install is pretty straight forward and simple. Really it just adds all the cool features and management stuff that Citrix has on top of MSTS. So if you already have Terminal Services running with the application I think you'll find the Citrix install pretty easy.

Some things to consider before hand is whether or not you want to remap the drives. The default is to remap C: to M:. Just make sure the drive remapping doesn't conflict with any currently mapped drive letters.

You'll probably want to implement roaming profiles and good system policy to lock the box down. There is a lot of information online about best practices to do that stuff.

Other than that really the actual MetaFrame install itself is a snap. You sound like you've planned this out pretty well and know what Citrix is going to do for you. I'm sure you'll do fine.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

The performance of MetaFrame vs T/S over a WAN (even a T1) is more justification for going Citrix, IMO.

Roaming profiles could be overkill with such a small number of client devices - depends on how "roaming" the users are. They are great, once you've figured out the ins and outs, however, and lend a good degree of flexibility to any implementation. Policies are a must.

Good tip on re-mapping the server drives. Many users get confused if their local drives are re-labelled U: or V: within a Citrix session, so I tend to remap just to allow them to continue using C: and D:.

The Citrix software itself should cause very few issues - it's a "nice" app. Terminal Services can be tricky, and MetaFrame integrates itself very tightly with it - hence many admins get confused between the two. Basic troubleshooting is quite easy in this respect - if it breaks under MetaFrame, is it still broken under Terminal Services?

Talking of apps, always drop to a cmd prompt and use the change user/install command before installing any app. Some apps do this as part of the setup procedure, but many don't. It's best to be on the safe side, although installing via Add/Remove Programs will do the same thing (I've just got used to the cmd line way of doing things). Installing direct from a CD via the Autorun can be dangerous to server health ;-)

Some (mainly older) apps require additional scripts (Application Compatibility Scripts) to be run or use additional "Transforms" files. Most apps (like IE) will propagate changes out to users if the admin makes them whilst still in change user/install mode, before any users log in and pick up the default profile.

Citrix's UPD (Universal Printer Driver) works really well generally, but can create huge spool files, and can run into permissions issues (see other threads on this, and also my Printing FAQ - shameless plug!)

That server should easily handle 75+ users - depending on what app(s) you're planning on serving

I hope this is useful

CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk