WAN or BUST. Need help on Citrix

[Camacho]

Everything is running smoothly on our little Win2000 network until...
we need to get our remote offices connected to our system.
Per our software vendor, to enable remote connectivity:
-We need to have a Contiguous Frame Relay and necessary firewall installed.
-Bandwidth is at least 128Kbps at each remote site (we have 2).
-At least 256kbps at main server.
-Equip our Win 2000 server with Citrix Metaframe w/ 10 user licences and 10 Terminal Client Access Licenses.
My problem is:
I DON'T KNOW anything about Frame Relay, Citrix, backbone that would provide 256kbps bandwidth. Well, maybe I know a litte because I've been backtracking on the discussion, reading articles on frame relay forum, Citrix and Cisco.
Still, I need help on the basic hardware needed, installation guides, commands, the works. Please mention router brands and models. Flavors of Citrix Metaframe,
and others.

Our database application software vendor support is limited to their software.
I turn to you guys on the what-not.
Outsourcing consultants is out of the question. My boss will not like it.
This would be my first venture on WAN so I'm very excited to learn.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

The oft-recommended

http://www.metaframebook.com

is a good reference for all things Citrix. Here you will find help with installation, commands, the works ;-)

As for hardware, that will depend on several things;

I'm no expert on router models, but would guess a basic Cisco would be more than adequate.

As for the server, the main factors to take into account are number of users, the specific applications, and the way the users actually use the applications available to them.

Without knowing anything about your organisation and software, a reliable recommendation cannot be made, but you should be thinking in the dual-processor (capable at bare minimum) 1Gb RAM arena - even with only 10 users.

Your phrase "Our Win2000 server" worries me - you should not use a Terminal Server as a Domain Controller or any other kind of server. Terminal Services places a huge strain on a server's resources.

Your database application is likely to be the biggest trouble-maker - bespoke DBs tend to cause more issues than any other kind of application. Push the vendor as hard as you can to ensure it's fully terminal server aware.

Only install the database client on the Citrix server - put the actual database onto a remote fileserver with plenty of RAM and a decent disk array.

As far as flavours of MetaFrame go, you will probably want MetaFrame XPs, as you are not going to need Load-Balancing with a single server (XPa), and you may find you can't justify the budget (or even find a pressing need) for Resource Manager, Installation Manager and the other XPe admin tools.

Depending on how you want your users to access the apps, I'd recommend you take a look at NFuse. It doesn't cost anything but time...

Hope this helps

CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[BeerGood]

If you're setting up dedicated frame relay links to your own offices, you shouldn't need a firewall unless you don't trust the people in your remote offices! Anyhooo, depends what you want, but on top of what CitrixEngineer has noted, I'd suggest investigating putting in a decent internet link in all your sites (if you don't already have 'em) and using vpns between your offices. You should get faster links, and it'll probably be cheaper (as long as you check the agreements carefully). As reliable as frame relay? Well, maybe not, but then again you can get some pretty good service level agreements combined with automatic dial-up backups - or even have redundant links via separate ISPs. If you can get cable, even better (although I believe a lot of people have had no problems with ADSL, my personal experience with it is not good).

Cisco make good gear, if generally expensive for the small companies. I've heard good reports re Nokia (

http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,8764,152,00.html).

If you want to get your hands dirty, linux is pretty flexible (

http://www.smoothwall.org/

and

http://www.freeswan.org/).

Heck you can even look at something like

http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.com/products/products.cfm?ProductID=54

or

http://www.netgear.com/products/routers/firewallvpn.asp

or..... the list goes on.....

Anyhow, definitely whatever you do - if you currently only have the one win2k server - don't use it for Metaframe as well. Setup a dedicated server. And ten users? Don't tell the Citrix rep, but you could always consider a stack of cheap pcs & PC anywhere....

OK... The Citrix solution is a lot nicer....

Cheers

 

[BeerGood]

You'll find that DSL or cable will be faster for you than frame unless you get a very fast (and expensive) frame link. Reliability however is the big issue, and it varies a lot between countries/suppliers/exchanges. Maybe you could consider frame or ISDN as a backup for the DSL should that fail. Your ISP vendors should be able to make some suggestions.

If you have a router at one site, you'll need one at the other sites - nomally - although it doesn't need to be the same model. Generally the same brand is a good idea if only for management. Again, this is where you now can save some money by using vpns as the gear is so cheap.....

Make sure that the scanners etc will work ok with Citrix, assuming that you're going that way.

Cheers

 

[JohnTcolo]

What in the world do you need PC Anywhere for? Forget that, you can shadow via Citrix and if you need another tool, use VNC, it is much superior to PC Anywhere. For that matter, netmeeting is free and at least as good as PC Anywhere.

BeerGood is right about DSL speed, we use it here and it works great. We have had a few crashes, Quest is our vendor and they notify us promptly and give us an update. I would say it has only gone down 3 times in a year and we have 3 remote sites-so that is a pretty good average for reliability.

Oh yeah, make darn sure you ahve SP1 on those XP machines. And that 800MHZ is not much for a Citrix server-but it would do, I guess. You should at least have a dual processor, IMHO.

Good Luck

 

[MattWray]

What kind of speeds are you running on your DSL? We have a Frame here that always recieves comlaints of the slow speed.
What are some arguing points, pros and cons, of the DSL/Cable with VPN against the Frame?
I, myself have no experience with Frame. This is what we had when I started. My boss seems against a DSL VPN solution, but I am not really sure why....

Thanks,

Matt Wray
MCSE, MCSA, MCP, CCNA

http://www.sss-steel.com

http://www.total-tec.com

 

[muddyjohn]

I am the WAN man for a citrix asp. Rule of thumb, if you are publishing desktops or databases, go with a frame circuit. It will save you alot of sleep.
As far as citrix hardware, give me a gig nic and lots of processor power. And max ram!!!!!
I have to agree with most of the comments here, We have 55 citrix boxes and three domains. What ever you do in citrix make sure you plan it out and be ready to rebuild the boxes a couple of times to get it right.

Good luck,
Living with citrix.