Citrix Versus Windows Server 2012 or working together?

Hi All,
I was hoping someone might be able to shed some light on a couple of Citrix, Windows server 2012 questions.

Quick background is our company runs terminal services over Windows Server 2003 with XP clients. We run a private network with head office on a 40M SHDSL connection and our remoter sites on ADSL2+. The issues we have with this environment are PDF's are painful to scroll through. Internet browsing is a real challenge and your in real trouble if their is a video.

Now we have done a lot of research into this and understand the problem is due to the RDP client in Windows 2003, but we are now trying to figure out what is the next best approach which has led us to Citrix or Server2012. Now i have done a lot of reading in regards to this but there is a lot of conflicting and misleading information so I thought i would see if anyone here has any real life experience.

Now the situation is this, we are going to upgrade our terminal servers to Server 2008/2012 regardless (moving to 64bit). From what I have read though Windows XP cannot run the RDP8 client which means it will not be able to utilise Remote FX for WAN. This means if we want to actually utlisise the new RDP technology then all our clients will need to be updated to Windows7. The cost of licensing alone would be ridiculous but the issue is most of our PC's do not even have the specs to run 7.

So this brings me to Citrix. Citrix from my understanding is going to be a lot more affordable as it can run on Windows XP. Where it gets confusing for me though is does the Citrix ICA protocol have any reliance on the RDP protocol or are they totally separate? For example if we moved to Citrix in our current environment versus upgrading to Server2012 would it make any difference? If we moved to server2012 and used Citrix from an XP client, does it utilise the remoteFX for WAN??

I know i am jumping all over the place, but we are really unsure of our best approach. We need to make some changes but also need the most affordable option that is going to give the best results.

I guess any information or insight would be a good start!

Thanks in advance

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Comments

it_consultant

Upgrade to Windows 7.

the_Grinch

I've worked in Citrix environments and it always came down to just having their client side software installed. It does utilize some form of RDP, but having run it on 2003 Servers and 2008 Servers I've never experienced the issues your describe. It should be noted that I have never run Citrix on a Server 2012 box.

As a personal aside, Citrix is great when it works, but god when it is having issues look out. If you print a lot, it is to be avoided as I've always had tons of printing issues is every form of environment it has been run in.

RomBUS

I've heard a lot of good things with Server 2012. And from what I've seen on video with RemoteFX over WAN, looks very impressive. Though it would probably be a longer process to upgrade from 2003 (would probably be upgrade to 2008 first). But it seems you're upgrading to 2008 anyways so I would say this would be your best option. How many clients are you looking to upgrade from XP?

I am not sure how Citrix performs over RDP sessions when it comes to multimedia. Citrix XenDesktop could work with Server 2012 but I think more suited for more of the VDI type deployments

albanga

Hi All,

Thanks for your speedy replies.

A couple of the replies mentioned Windows 7. As i mentioned in my first post, the problem with moving to Win7 is the cost. We have 250 clients all of which are OEM licensed for XP. To move to Windows7 would be a huge licensing cost, but also as i mentioned a lot of our machines are not really spec'd to run Windows7. So along with all the licensing we would need to upgrade around 50 machines. That is why i am saying the RDP8 client connecting to Server2012 is not really a feasible option at this stage.

That is what lead me to Citrix but i do not know enough about it to understand how it would perform in an environment of XP clients connecting to a Windows2008/2012 server.
My main question is whether or not it runs ontop of RDP or does it run totally separate to RDP?

it_consultant

I am willing to bet that the cost of citrix will come out higher than the cost of upgrading to Win 7. Citrix is not cheap, the licensing alone is killer and remember, you still have to license your terminal server in addition to your citrix licenses whereas native windows TS only requires the one license. To answer your specific question, the ICA protocol is completely separate from RDP.