Terminal Services vs Citrix

Hello:

I just started working at a new company and have been thinking of making a
proposal to stop using Citrix MetaFrame XPs FR1 and instead use just Windows
Server 2003 Terminal Services. It would save us between $5,000 - $10,000
(US) from my rough estimate. We spent a lot of money on Citrix licenses just
for one application and now we are planning to hire up to 150 new (Citrix)
users, so that will require more $$$ for Citrix licenses. The sole Citrix
application that we use is not even very sophisticated; it runs from a
shortcut that points to an .exe on the application server. It's a database
application that is specific to our industry.

It looks like our VAR recommended Citrix to us years ago (way before I
arrived) and we have been stuck using it ever since because we're so
dependant on it now. I don't think Citrix is a bad product, but I do think
that we are paying for features that we don't even utilize. The only feature
of Citrix that we really leverage is the load balancing built-in to the
farm. So based on that fact, I'd like to know if Windows Server 2003 Network
Load Balancing would work well with Terminal Services, if at all. I don't
know what the overhead of running RDP vs ICA would be, but I can't imagine
it would be a lot for the simple application that we use.

Please let me know your real world experiences with hosting applications on
Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services and some techniques that you have used
for redundancy and load balancing. I'll await your replies before I pursue
this any further.

Thank you in advance.

Regards,
Martin

Hi,

There is a product named "Secure Global Desktop Terminal Services
Edition" in
"http://www.tarantella.com/products/tse/index.html"

It provides most of MetaFrame's features (Load balancing, seamless
window integration, etc) but it is much cheaper.

This product is an extension of Microsoft's Terminal Services and uses
the same RDP protocol underneath, so you still have to also pay
microsoft for the licenses (yet it is still much cheaper than
MetaFrame).

Jonathan.

"MartinHTN" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed)>...
> Hello:
>
> I just started working at a new company and have been thinking of making a
> proposal to stop using Citrix MetaFrame XPs FR1 and instead use just Windows
> Server 2003 Terminal Services. It would save us between $5,000 - $10,000
> (US) from my rough estimate. We spent a lot of money on Citrix licenses just
> for one application and now we are planning to hire up to 150 new (Citrix)
> users, so that will require more $$$ for Citrix licenses. The sole Citrix
> application that we use is not even very sophisticated; it runs from a
> shortcut that points to an .exe on the application server. It's a database
> application that is specific to our industry.
>
> It looks like our VAR recommended Citrix to us years ago (way before I
> arrived) and we have been stuck using it ever since because we're so
> dependant on it now. I don't think Citrix is a bad product, but I do think
> that we are paying for features that we don't even utilize. The only feature
> of Citrix that we really leverage is the load balancing built-in to the
> farm. So based on that fact, I'd like to know if Windows Server 2003 Network
> Load Balancing would work well with Terminal Services, if at all. I don't
> know what the overhead of running RDP vs ICA would be, but I can't imagine
> it would be a lot for the simple application that we use.
>
> Please let me know your real world experiences with hosting applications on
> Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services and some techniques that you have used
> for redundancy and load balancing. I'll await your replies before I pursue
> this any further.
>
> Thank you in advance.
>
> Regards,
> Martin