Terminal Services Part 10: Making the Choice: TS vs. Citrix?
One of the biggest questions that has been on people’s minds since the dawn of Terminal Services is, “When do I need to make the jump to Citrix?” Citrix and Terminal Services have throughout their lifetime been inexorably linked. This is partially due to the similarities in technology, but even more so due to the repeatedly-renewed contract between Microsoft and Citrix that keeps their symbiotic relationship alive.
Back in Chapter 1, I spent a good amount of time talking about that relationship and hinting towards the reasons why you might consider making the jump. Let’s talk now about a few more reasons why Citrix provides a competitive advantage over Terminal Services. While discussing these points, let’s be cautious to point out the differences in cost between the two as well.
So, why would you consider making a jump from Terminal Services to Citrix? Consider these situations:
You require remote application support for OSs other than Windows. Microsoft only provides Terminal Services for the Windows Server operating system. While clients exist for Mac and various Linux distributions to connect to applications hosted atop Windows Server, Microsoft does not support the installation of Terminal Services to alternate OSs. Citrix, on the other hand, supports Solaris, UP-UX, and IBM-AIX as potential hosts.
You require an excellent frame rate for applications or full-motion video. While Terminal Services does support the display of full-motion video and high-frame rate applications, it doesn’t do so well. The RDP protocol has traditionally lagged behind Citrix’s ICA protocol in its support of applications that have high frame rate needs. In recent versions Citrix has added substantial improvements to their protocol to support even CAD applications over latent links.
You need greater levels of granularity with application provisioning. In its out-of-the-box configuration, Terminal Services does not provide rich levels of provisioning for applications to users. With TS, once you’ve created an application, any user can then access that application with the right connection information. Citrix provides for the provisioning of applications to specified groups, and ensures that only approved applications can be seen by users through its interfaces.
You want enterprise-scalable single sign-on. Terminal Services today can support single sign-on, however its implementation can be challenging and it may not fully support the needs of enterprises. Citrix, however, has enhanced support for single sign-on technologies including support for smart cards. More importantly, Citrix’s support of these technologies is more mature than that seen in Terminal Services.
You desire richer load balancing across servers. Terminal Services comes equipped with the TS Session Broker, which enables sessions to be load balanced across multiple servers. That support even includes support for balancing across dissimilar hardware. However, Citrix’s load balancing capabilities go far beyond the simple hard-coded options provided by Terminal Services. With Citrix you can load balance based on actual performance characteristics at the time of session creation, and even perform preferential load balancing based on importance.
You need greater levels of administrative control over servers and sessions. The centralized control of Terminal Servers and its sessions is done via Group Policy. Group Policy exposure for Terminal Services is sufficient for locking down desktops and applications when the needs for that lock down are limited in nature. Citrix, on the other hand, has its own levels of administrative control over and above Group Policy that enables the rich and centralized control of Citrix servers across an entire farm. These additions to TS’s management toolsets make it easier to administer and assure higher levels of configuration control.
You require rich support for client-side peripherals. Terminal Services has come far with its support for client-side peripherals in Server 2008, however Citrix remains the market leader in its technology support for ActiveSync and TWAIN-type devices that are connected to client hardware.
You desire higher density of users per server. Terminal Services can natively support tens, dozens, or even more users per server based on the architecture of your environment and how you’ve enabled applications. Citrix goes a step further through the addition of two technologies: The first, CPU Management, smoothes out the “spikes” of processor utilization that tends to occur with use, making for a more predictable user experience. The second, Memory Optimization, rebases DLLs in memory, regularly freeing up memory for use elsewhere in the system.
As expected, however, all of these add-on’s provided by Citrix come at a cost. Citrix XenApp arrives in three potential editions, each more expensive than the last yet each coming with additional features. All of Citrix’s editions are a cost that applies directly on top of the cost you would normally pay for Terminal Services alone. Thus, to build a Terminal Services environment you will pay for servers, server OSs, and TSCALs. To upgrade to a Citrix environment, you will add to this the additional cost of Citrix licenses, which are licensed on a per-concurrent user basis. Depending on the edition selected, your cost for Citrix’s additional features could add upwards of an additional $600 per concurrent user to your overall cost for deploying the environment.
In the end, you will need to determine what you want out of your remote applications environment and decide if your needs require the additional cost and benefits associated with Citrix XenApp.
Related Posts
Rate this Post
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
