Alternatives to Citrix Remote Computing?

Dysfnctnl85 asks: "The company I work for relies heavily on remote computing through a Citrix MetaFrame server. The reliance on this stems from the structure of our accounting software and the fact that we have 2 remote sites that need to access this data all day, everyday. We are investigating alternatives to the Citrix system we currently operate. How do companies of similar structures deal with this type of problem? Is it feasible (or practical) to use Windows Terminal Services to achieve everything Citrix is capable of doing? This includes, but is not limited to, the ability to print from the Citrix session to a user's printer, the ability to access network drives from the Citrix session, access the user's local drives through the session, and the ability to use published apps. The main concern with this type of setup is the ability to print. What alternatives are there to Citrix?"

Comments

Lots of stuff

[Daath]

Lots of stuff, some might not have what you are looking for... But hey, sift through these, and see if there is anything of interest :-)

Genuit's ThinWorx
Tarantella
Provision Networks
HOB
Prospero
Win4Lin
Konect
GraphOn's GO-Global

HTH :)

Re:Lots of stuff

[Holi]

Pcanywhere, isn't really a multiuser environment, It it really just shares the console so it really doesn't work as a multiuser system.

Re:Lots of stuff

[rafelbev]

There is also a product by 2X Software called Application Server which handles the Published Applications side of things as well as the Load Balancing of Terminal Servers.

However they are still working on integrating the two, this should be added in the near future. The products target directly Citrix customer's base and are slowly implementing almost all if not totally all Citrix features and more at 1/10th of the cost.

MSTS

[TheTrueELf]

Seeing as I use MS Terminal Services to do everything you mentioned, I'd say you could fairly easily kiss Citrix (and it's relatively large licensing fees) goodbye. I've migrated 99% of my company to Thin Clients RDPing to MSTS2003 servers, and could not be happier. Four branches nationwide, and (excepting servers, of course) less than 5 non-thin-client systems, 2 of which are mine. It is salient that MS and Citrix have cross-licensing and other business-partnership-type agreements, which I believe include code sharing. MetaFrame is built on top of TS.

-ELf

MS RDP

[b0lt]

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol, also known as Terminal Services, is basically a Microsoft licensed version of Citrix ICA. Microsoft basically built RDP on top of ICA. IIRC, Citrix sued Microsoft for the feature, which is why Windows XP Pro is only supposed to allow one user logged on at any time. Anyway, Terminal Services should work for you needs, since it supports all of the noted features.

-b0lt

Re:MS RDP

[JoeShmoe]

No, not quite.

RDP is old and busted, ICA is the new hotness. RDP is basically like pcAnywhere or VNC...it relies heavily on sending bitmaps back and forth of screen changes (not always, but with the foofy windowing effects of even certain business applications, it's increasingly become the standard case). It must also operate in a separate session window that floats above the user's actual desktop. Cut and paste is sloppy, file transfer is kludgy, and data shuffles back and forth on the RDP connection in a manner than it horribly inefficient. For example, a document on the server being printed on the client must go from the server to the client, be rendered in the client's application, tranferred to the spooler on the server, then transmitted back to the port on the client. That's four trips for essentially the same data.

ICA operates at a much lower level, compressing bitmaps and sending windowing commands, which allows most of the heavy lifting to be done on the client. You can run an ICA application on their own right from the user's desktop (IE, no sessions...ICA looks just like a local application, including OLE, drag-n-drop, etc). Drives and even COM or USB devices are automatically mapped. Bandwidth use is much, much lower and much, much more efficient.

Citrix essentially invented the technology behind RDP and ICA. It was really a pretty simple hack. Microsoft, fearing that they would be left behind if enterprise users started jumping into thin client technology, licensed RDP from Citrix back in Windows NT 4.0 days (Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition was a separate, stand-alone product that had so many licensing hurdles imposed by Citrix it was almost unusable). Citrix knew that Microsoft could essentially recreate what they had done (and probably do it better) so they happily agreed to take it up the butt and give Microsoft favorable licensing terms...which you can see only continue to lean more in Microsoft's favor as they progressed to 2000 Server and 2003 Server. Besides, Citrix had already moved on to using ICA so as far as they were concerned Microsoft could have RDP. Citrix did, however, negotiate several conditions, like the 256-color limitation, no COM port mapping, etc, and they earn royalties for each Terminal Service license (which is why you need to pay additionally to use TS even if you have enough client licenses). On the other hand, Microsoft has gotten more and more features shoehorned for free into Terminal Services, which makes Citrix less and less attractive for the money.

Windows XP only allows one RDP connection (really two since remote assitance can work simultaneously with the user currently logged in) not because of something Citrix said, but because Microsoft doesn't want to undercut sales of their own server product. If you could run five RDP sessions of Office from a $299 copy of XP, why the hell would you pay $899 for a five-user edition of Windows 2003 server?

-JoeShmoe
.

Re:MS RDP

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, RDP is much like ICA, in that it sends over the window commands rather than screen scraping. That's why a TermServ is usable over a dial-up line, while VNC is painful over a T1. The only real difference is the protocol used to send the data. As a matter of fact, if you run Vista on a computer that doesn't have the power to run Aero, you can RDP into it from a computer that does have the horsepower, and get Aero in your RDP window.

As for the reason that it was integrated into the kernel, it wasn't because they were going to be left behind -- Citrix was quite a niche product 10 years ago. The real issue is the same reason that disk defragmentation was added to the kernel: implementing it requires significant changes to the kernel that can't be achieved by drivers. Since Citrix (and Executive, DiskKeeper's author) had source licenses, they basically had their own distro of Windows. This meant that every time MS issued a service pack, they would have to apply the patches to their own code and issue their own service pack. Heaven forbid you should want to defrag your Citrix machine!

Ultimately this is infeasible because the forked versions would never be able to keep up with security updates. Since the technology is really something that should ship with Windows (to enable scenarios like remote assistance), MS licensed the technology (the basic kernel changes, not the communication protocol) from Citrix.

As far as I know, the initial restrictions (color depth, device mapping, etc.) were due to the fact that they hadn't been added to RDP yet. And the licensing fees for TS? I'm pretty sure that's just so that the product doesn't cannibalize upgrade sales. In other words, MS still gets the money for the user, even if their client is just a dumb terminal or a 486 running Win95.

dom

Re:MS RDP

[pla]

RDP is basically like pcAnywhere or VNC...it relies heavily on sending bitmaps back and forth

Uh, no. Have you ever actually used RDP as more than a "oh gee, nice of them to finally include that"? Doing VNC on a machine on the local network crawls. RDP even over a dialup feels almost as responsive as sitting at the remote machine (except you quickly gain a full appreciation of just how often networks "hiccup").


Citrix essentially invented the technology behind RDP and ICA.

If by "invented" you mean "First thought to apply the idea of a remote X desktop to Windows", I would agree. But the core idea existed LONG before even Windows ever appeared on the scene. Microsoft simply made it very, very difficult to implement on Windows (and even Citrix needed to add kernel code), so it took quite a few generations of Windows to make the idea viable.

ProPalms TSE

[scarpa]

ProPalms TSE server is definitely a viable alternative to Citrix. I have been using it for about three years and even though the product has changed owners a few times - NewMoon to Tarantella who got bought by Sun who sold the product to ProPalms - the product has been performing great all along, with every feature you listed.

It functions using a client that extends Microsoft's RDP protocol, allowing for seamless publishing of apps from multiple load balanced app servers. The backend servers compromise various roles and support load balancing and a gateway server in addition to the app server functionality.

Terminal Services / Remote Desktop

[quan74]

Windows Terminal Services (now known as Remote Desktop) will let you map your local printer AND drives to the remote machine, so you can copy files & print from the remote system to the local system.

The downside is mainly in licensing, you'll need to purchase a CAL from MS for each user you want to "remote connect" (Not sure how you had citrix licensed). I'd also reccomend locking down access, either through a roubst firewall system or preferably a VPN.

Terminal Server

[sid crimson]

We use Terminal Server 2003 and have had no difficulties. Server 2003 made a very nice improvement compared to 2000 since the color depth is now greater -- it's really as good as having a local desktop so long as the connection is fast and reliable.

Local printing from a Terminal connection is handled nicely, and most printers are supported via printer driver redirection... for example you will map the user's HP Photosmart xxxx printer to the Windows Driver for the "HP 950c" printer.

This package makes printer redirection easier: http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/f/2/9f237 742-e057-4e00-a0d5-62de2ebf9fbd/TSPDRW_Package.exe /

My understanding is Citrix reigns supreme WRT USB and availability. You simply cannot sync your USB Palm pilot via Remote Desktop. And clustering for Terminal Services is limited relative to Citrix.

As for other options... you might check out Linux Terminal Server Project. Without know the specific software packages you use Windows might be your only real option at the moment.

-sid

WTS is good enough

[potHead42]

I work in a company which does mainly Application Server Providing, and we switched about 2 years ago from Citrix MetaFrame (1.8) to Windows 2003.

Printing works well enough, you just have to install all the necessary drivers on the server and make sure the clients use the same drivers (though universal printing engines like ThinPrint and others will work too).

Local drives work like a charm (although only since 2003), you can even copy files with Ctrl+C and then paste it in your local explorer with Ctrl+V (I don't know if the newest Citrix also supports this). Network drives work as expected.

We don't use published applications, and as far as I know Windows doesn't support this. You *can* specify an application to run in the client, but I never used it.

Our customers all connect over the internet, and the performance is pretty much the same as with Citrix. We did some tests with Presentation Server 4.0, and it performs a little better with images because it has a better caching mechanism, but the difference wasn't enough to warrant the (much) bigger licensing costs.

I also tested the NX server from NoMachine, which supports proxying RDP sessions. The site claimed speedups from 2-10 times, although in my experience it was between 1 to 2 times, and because printer and drive redirection needed additional setup, we didn't continue with this. But for X11 sessions NX is currently the best thing (IMHO better than UNIX Citrix).

So, if you only need to provide Windows applications, WTS is a good enough replacement for Citrix. There's also an official client for OS X and an Open Source client for UNIX (which supports RDP 5.1 as well as printer and drive redirection).

Remote Access

[brendan0powers]

Have a look at NoMachine www.nomachine.com. Its a linux based remote acces client/server, that allows access to windows terminal servers over ssh. It even has a java based web applet, witch allows access to applications from a web browser. Also have a look at Netilla SSL VPN.

SunRay

[green pizza]

SunRay terminals consume less real-world bandwidth on average than Citrix-based devices. The servers currently need to be either Sun Solaris or PC Linux, but there's talk of Windows support later this year.

http://www.sun.com/sunray/sunray2/

Pretty slick stuff and Sun's been doing it for about 5 years or so.

It's an Application Problem

[Bacon Bits]

We had a fairly extensive Citrix farm at my last job. There were several reasons for an application to be made available on Citrix:

1. The application required WinNT 4 and would not run on Win2k or WinXP.
2. The application conflicted with other, more critical applications that were required to exist on the same network.
3. Liscensing. Some applications were cheaper to run from a Citrix server.
4. Access to the application was required off-site, and Citrix works over the web.
5. Configuration of the application was so difficult and fragile that it was easier to admin the Citrix server rather than the clients. This was typically web applications that required you to set your IE security settings to "rape me".

The one thing I noticed again and again: the applications that we wanted most onm Citrix were those that did not do the job we wanted them to do. They were old, poorly coded, intended for different environments, or simply did not do what we required them to do. It was common knowledge that analysts would go out and buy software and then hand it to use and tell use to make it work, even when it was clear to us that the software was never designed to do what we wanted it to even before we put the CD in the tray.

This accounting software you have seems exactly like the same kind of situation. You're being asked to wedge an application into a role it was neither designed nor intended to perform. Consequently, you might wish to consider looking at a different accounting app instead of a different remote app server.

Citrix Runs on TS

[JustASlashDotGuy]

Citrix pretty much runs on top of Terminal Services nowadays. So yes, all the stuff you mentioned is possible with TS. The fancy bells and whistles are not possible yet tho (IE: Application sharing instead of desktop sharing, Failover/Clustering of apps, etc). At our office, we run Citrix for stuff hosted for external clients, but run TS for internal stuff (primarily for failover). It works well as long as you accespt the shortcommings a pure TS environment. We'd all kill for Citrix all over, but it's just not cost effective right now. I think I heard something at one time about the next version of TS having some time of App level publishing built it, but I can't truly recall.

Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services

[djwoodard]

I've used Win 2k3 TS to print to local printers & access shared and local drives. You cannot use published apps in Microsoft's TS. The remote user gets an entire desktop/profile.

Why?

[NoInfo]

We are investigating alternatives to the Citrix system we currently operate.

You said this, but didn't state why you're searching for alternatives. Is it because it's too expensive, because you need more features, or because you think there's a better alternative out there?

I think about the only argument you can really have is that it's expensive. There really are no other alternatives out there with more features (other than perhaps value-add things on top of Citrix Presentation Server, the new name for MetaFrame) or more stability/usefulness.

Some shops are able to make-do with the lower costing alternatives, but they have to live with far fewer features (e.g. only allow full desktops, don't do printing very well, have no way to load balance, have no way to isolate bad apps from one another, etc). If your needs for it are lighter then you can try piloting a Terminal Services-only solution which is (necessarily) less expensive than a Citrix one.

It's hard, though, for people to offer something better than Citrix. They've spent their entire lifetime focusing on the whole remoting applications gig. TS and RDP was built on top of code licensed from Citrix, so even MS takes a backseat.

Re: Um... no

[Anonymous Coward]

RDP stems FROM Citrix and the ICA protocol. Citrix was suckered into sharing technology with Microsoft so they could get direct access to the underlying API's a few years back. Citrix was smart in that they didn't share the ICA protocol with MS. MS then developed RDP as their thin protocol. Problem with that is that RDP has a 25k footprint where ICA can cruze just fine on 14k or even less. I guess if you have fewer users and don't care about bandwidth and server costs, then MS Terminal Services are for you... /rolls eyes....

For your Total Cost of ownership... Citrix is the way to go... I can't tell you how nice it is to publish an Application and not the entire desktop. That saves you from dealing with users who delete things or generally like to tinker. Add automatic printer creation and it's a no brainer.

MS did what they always do... they stole the technology and branded it as their own. Remeber in the beginning of Citrix (on NT 3.51 and Winframe 1.6), you didn't need MS terminal services at all... in fact it didn't exist!!!

More Info on the Topic at Hand

[Dysfnctnl85]

I apologize for not mentioning more about the subject, but I kinda didn't expect it to get posted in the first place.

To address the accounting software...there is no way we will be changing, so that is not a viable solution at all.

As far as investigating alternatives, we are currently running 3 Citrix MetaFrame servers. Right now, they are barely holding us user-wise, so we're replacing the existing hardware with more servers and adequate hardware. In the process, we will be moving away from Windows 2000 for a number of reasons.

So, do we continue to run Citrix and purchase the licenses for additional users as well as a version upgrade, or do we attempt to put a Windows Server 2003 solution into place utilizing Remote Desktop? Or what else?

Our current Citrix setup is not adequate, and not simply because of hardware, but printing is a total nightmare. There are so many levels involved with printing a report from our Solomon accounting software, it adds complexity to the very act of printing, so much that Citrix routinely breaks. Whoever is running helpdesk on a given day fields a significant number of Citrix calls, and generally speaking it is not the user's fault. It is extremely frustrating to say the least.

Hence this investigation. So I hope I shed some more light on the situation and please keep the suggestions coming.

We rely heavily on Microsoft Exchange, so keep that in mind when suggesting other OS-based solutions. I'm instituting a few BSD solutions for other tasks, but making the switch completely is very far down the road.

Re:More Info on the Topic at Hand

[neurovish]

I can't comment on how well terminal services can handle the thin client thing since I've never used it for that in the first place, but I do administer some Citrix servers, and it really sounds like you're stuck with it. What version of Citrix are you running? Since you're on win2k, I'm guessing it is not the newest release. From what I've seen, the printing system is vastly improved (I know your pains concerning Citrix printing breaking). They went back and redid everything from scratch in that department.

You also mention that you have several servers running Citrix...what is the reasoning behind this? It looks like terminal services will not cluster in this manner as Citrix does, so if it's a high availability kind of deal, then that could be another reason to stick with Citrix.

Re: Um... no

[Bert64]

You can publish a single app, but be very carefull what apps you publish...
If you publish any of the msoffice apps, or anything which can bring up help pages using IE, then your pretty much wasting your time and may as well give them a full desktop anyway.

You really need to publish custom-designed kiosk style apps, and if your having to write the apps from scratch anyway there are much better ways you could provide them than letting a native binary execute on one of your servers... Java springs to mind, the client will handle the load and the bulk of the code won't be running on your system so you've a much smaller footprint to keep secure.

Anyway, setup a citrix environment and get a half decent pentest company in, whatever you do to citrix it will always get broken, this isn't a fault of citrix but a direct result of the fact windows was always designed to be single-user.
Having conducted or watched over 50 penetration tests on citrix environments at all kinds of different companies, i can hand on heart say not one of them managed to keep it secure.