Hi Paul,
Sorry I did not address that question. We have not tried to print or use
any resources other than network \\tsclient type facilities. I, like
you, understand that can be done, however, I am waiting for others on
this list to chime in. Our bookkeeper now scans client checks to our
bank locally. We would like to do that using a cloud server if possible.
That would involve installing a USB check scanner. Let me know what you
find and any special changes you had to make.
We are happy to see this discussion as it is an obvious way for VFP
developers to move all their many VFP applications to the web and allow
their clients to access using desktops, laptops and probably tablets
anywhere in the world without the limitations of the web development
tools (speaking from my own research). VFP local/desktop applications
are far more powerful than anything I have seen online (speaking from my
own research). One limiting problem (if it is a problem) that we have in
the US is that our application has confidential patient information
protected by the US HIPAA federal law. We need to find a way to deal
with that. I think that using RDP into a cloud server may be a way to
accomplish that.
Note that we have not used Hostwinds for a long time (less than 1 year).
We would appreciate any feedback you give. We have used AccuWebHosting
for more than 2 years and InfinitelyVirtual about 5 years. Hostwinds
seems to have the best pricing for Win2008/12 and that is obviously why
we are trying them. I do not see a way to have more than 2 users
(Administrative and one data entry person) online simultaneously. There
are ways to install more CAL license(s) on their server but we have not
tried them. InfinitelyVirtual makes it easy and straightforward to have
as many users and memory and storage as you want but they are much too
expensive and we cannot sell/recommend them to clients. We are searching
for a less expensive alternative. If we could find a reliable,
reasonably priced alternative, we could probably send at least a hundred
potential users to them, maybe a lot more in the future. I think that
working online from a laptop and a desktop computer is the future of
healthcare billing/eRx/EHR/etc and there are hundreds of thousands of
potential users in the US. The question is pricing. The technology is
already here today and we have proved that.
On 9/10/2014 6:43 PM, Paul Hemans wrote:
Thanks for all the good info. Going to give hostwinds.com a go today.
I am thinking of using dropbox or Google drive to replicate updates
between a local site and the hosted session. So the hosted one is an
emergency site.
What do you do for printing? I am thinking of using Google cloud
print. I have a lot of problems with printing through RDP though I
understand 2008 has gotten better at that.
On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 7:36 AM, [email protected]
<[email protected]> wrote:
You have to first create your RDP the usual way. It is pretty simple after
you get the RDP client on your workstation. I believe there are different
versions. Google mstsc.exe The shortcut I gave was done on Win7. After you
have the RDP access working, you create the shortcut I described to be able
to log in automatically without seeing the RDP client window displayed. If
you only have one monitor, don't use the /span If you don't have experience
using RDP to access a server, I would recommend that you experiment with
that. For me it was trial and error but that was years ago and I forget the
details. I know once it worked, it seemed that it was obvious. I think you
can RDP into Win7 but I have not tried that.
I have not tried this, but I understand there is an RDP client for the
Chromebook and almost everything else, even Mac. I have a Samsung Note3. I
got an android RDP client for it and it works. I just did that as a test to
see if it was possible. Our application is for bookkeeping so I can't
imagine doing much without a real keyboard.
You can also use VNC to access a server and run VFP that way. I have done
that. Problem is that it is single user (as far as I know). Using RDP you
can have many users running a single VFP program as you want as long as it
works correctly on a standard Ethernet network.
We thought about offering this as a service to our company's clients.
Trouble is that our clients are all doing healthcare billing and we have
very few clients who could maintain this. We are not willing to that support
on at this time. We do have clients who have local hardware support. They
have replaced an in-house Win20xx server with a cloud server. We do not get
involved so I don't know details. We don't hear any complaints so I assume
it works well. I know some clients have more than 10 simultaneous users and
think the speed it much better than on Ethernet.
For our company it works so well that we would never think of running our
servers in-house again. The 3 companies that I mentioned are companies that
we use for our development and other things. We have offices in 3 states
from coast to coast and we all access the same programs successfully with
few issues. This is for Ed: We use Rackspace to host our MS Exchange. I
believe they also have Win20xx servers with RDP access available, but we
have not used them.
On 9/10/2014 1:42 PM, Sytze de Boer wrote:
Kam, this sounds all very encouraging.
I am curious about how to create a short cut with
C:\Windows\System32\mstsc.exe /span "C:\Users\RDP\TS109_Administrator.rdp"
And specifically, how do you get on for PRINTING ?
On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 3:08 AM, [email protected]
<[email protected]>
wrote:
We only use their VPS with access by RDP. Note that this is a Windows
2008/12 server (your choice - unfortunately Win2003 is no longer
available)
so the VFP installation is the same as installing on a local workstation.
We install FileZilla on the 2008/12 server so we can get things on and
off
the server easily. Just FTP your install exe to the server and then
execute
it as you would on a local workstation.
All 3 of these are the same except for pricing, storage, memory, etc. You
choose what works best for you. For 2 users on 2008/12 you should have a
minimum of 2 gb memory (just my opinion). We find that the amount of
memory
you have mainly affects performance. If you google 'remote desktop
hosting'
you will get many hits. Be sure to use it for at least a couple of weeks
before committing to production. We have tried several in the past 6
months
that failed and had to reinstall the OS. The 'support' did not have any
idea what happened. We lost all our data, programs, etc. Of course we
always have a local complete backup at least every evening or after any
major changes. We use Webfaction (recommended on this list long ago).
This
is a very low cost, reliable Linux web host we have used for at least 6
years. We backup our terminal servers onto webfaction. The speed is up to
10mb/second so it does not take long. Then we have a local workstation
with
over 30TB storage and use SyncBackSE scheduled backup from Webfaction to
local storage and keep up to one years daily backup.
Our opinion is that there are some amateurs out there offering services
that have no idea what they are doing.
We prefer to program with 2 monitors - one for the running program and
one
for the VFP debugger. Here is a trick to use with Win2008/12. When you
access by RDP use a shortcut target with something like this:
C:\Windows\System32\mstsc.exe /span
"C:\Users\RDP\TS109_Administrator.rdp"
Note the '/span' this will cause your display to use both monitors. Very
nice.
On 9/9/2014 7:52 PM, Sytze de Boer wrote:
Please help me and guide me
Are you saying there is a Fox app you have developed on a drive with
Hostwinds
What would you say to me if I said I want to do something like this
where
my App may be little "backward" and consists of basically an EXE, 200
dbf/cdx/fpt files and 200 frx/frt files
Hostwind suggest I should choose their vps option
On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 3:05 AM, [email protected] <
[email protected]>
wrote:
We currently are running our VFP9 SP2 application on servers at:
AccuWebHosting.com, hostwinds.com, InfinitelyVirtual.com.
On 9/9/2014 5:58 AM, Paul Hemans wrote:
I currently run my own servers and have a number of clients
connecting
via RDP sessions. I need off-site redundancy, can anyone recommend a
site that runs cheap 2003 - 2008 server systems that give you access
to setting up windows services, IIS, RDP sessions and the like.
Thanks.
[excessive quoting removed by server]
_______________________________________________
Post Messages to: [email protected]
Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox
OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech
Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox
This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected]
** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the
author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added
to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
