[Ltsp-discuss] Re: Citrix Server

[Chris Matchett]

I read somewhere in this thread someone was investigating Citrix. I manage a school network of 1000 users, 85 concurrent, that uses NT4 TS and Citrix Metaframe 1.8. Two of the NT TS boxes have dual 333Mhz processors with 1Gb of RAM and a clatter of hard drives. Another minor NT TS box runs Metaframe as well because anyone who uses Citrix knows that you don't manage load balancing on a box that you are serving a Citrix desktop or Applications from i.e. the two boxes mentioned earlier. Another similar NT4 spec box acts as a file/print server and does not run Citrix.   My conclusion is that this hardware can only support adequately 50 Win95/98 clients in this environment. This seems a bit costly to me. It's excellent for the 45 50Mhz 486s we have but I'm currently in the process of taking our other 60 Pentium II/III of the Citrix environment and just getting files and prints of the file server. Terminal Server does this clever thing of copying users profiles from the fileserver to the terminal server and back again to the fileserver when the user logs off. Hhhmmm...so you have 10 35 minute classes in a day with 2-5Mb profiles moving back and forward and forward and back when classes log on and off. Doesn't make for a quick logon?!   Anyway, that was just a bit of my experience. In regards to LTSP this has given us the freedom to explore Linux in our school. I setup about a dozen LTS clients, dual booting from the hard drive with Win98, with the hope to spur some kids on some and raise awareness of Linux. We run our Web/FTP server on a RH7.2 box. I think there needs to be much more scope in schools for kids to do stuff in lunchtimes and after school that just can't be done in class. Like schools just don't let kids explore programming for example or server side stuff. But ours does and can now thanks to LTSP :)    Chris