Re: New Windows Infrastructure
- From: Gerry Hickman <gerry666uk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 20:23:24 +0100
Hi,
Their application runs on Windows (which will replace the UNIX box). The vendor's application runs on windows with an SQL database and I will also need a web server for a separate module which will allow our customers to access account data online.
OK.
quote from a vendor to install the infrastructure. However, they indicated that I need 5 servers for the implementation which include:
Citrix SQL Web Server 2 Domain Controllers.
I would think that if the app runs on windows, I do not need the citrix server. The clients would connect through a terminal emulation or web browser - guess that I need to clarify that with the vendor.
Yes, I don't understand the need for Citrix either, it partly depends on how the clients are going to interact with the application? The idea behind Citrix is that you can have "thin clients" and all the hard work is done on the server, however, when I looked into this recently it seemed extremely expensive for very little gain over bog standard client/server apps. If you can move to diskless workstations and everything still works, then Citix sounds good, but otherwise I'm not conviced of it's cost/benifit. Anyone got good stories of Citrix, terminals, diskless stations, lost-cost CALs etc??
> Additionally,
I would think that with 2 domain controllers, one could run the vendor app and the other sql. Does this make sense? I am also confused that the vendor indicates that I need 5 Windows Server 2003 Standard licenses. Aren't Citrix and SQL their own OSs?
This is the kind of setup I'd use, but that's for a big office block that can't afford downtime. If it's a smaller operation and doesn't need 24/7 you could run apps on the DCs. It makes sense to have separate DCs though, because let's say you want to upgrade your Active Directory in two weeks time, with separate DCs it's easy, but if you've got a bunch of apps installed it could be a nightmare. It's similar with IIS. I currently run IIS and SQL on the same server - I'd argue this gives SUPERIOR security (contrary to what most people would say), but again there are arguments to have separate boxes. If it's a big operation, you MUST have separate boxes.
Additionally, the vendor indicated that authentication for their app could be through windows authentication or SQL. So, if I choose SQL, is there a need to set up users in the domain? Sort of use these as stand alone servers.
Difficult one; if you've got a big corporate internal structure, I'd say you MUST use Windows auth, but if all the users are out there with web browsers then Windows auth is pointless. One nice thing with Windows auth is that you don't have any plain text passwords sitting in text files.
-- Gerry Hickman (London UK) .
- References:
- New Windows Infrastructure
- From: jdw
- New Windows Infrastructure
- Prev by Date: RIS Windows 2003 Server issue
- Next by Date: NT 4 Domain to 2003 AD question
- Previous by thread: New Windows Infrastructure
- Next by thread: Server 2003 guide
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
