Is there anything better than Terminal Server for remote ?

Denis_Petrov

Version: Navision 4.01 native database, 47 users, heavy volume (10,000 checks per month, 700 bank accounts, 175 companies). Database size is 60 Gb.

Is there anything better than Terminal Server for remote access (full operations including printing checks and generating reports)? We are located in downtown New Orleans and worry about local sever (which is a champ and works great) ...

Thank you all!

Savatage

If it's a champ and works great - then why are you looking for another solution?

Is there something about terminal services that isn't working the way you would like?

garak

You use MS Terminals Service?
My customers with more than 1 office use Citrix TS (without any probs)

But why do you will change the "champ" ?

Regards

themave

we use terminal server with 7 locations, but less volumn printing then you, I believe adding citrix would help, as it handles printing better in my opinion. Just cost a lot more. FYI, we are on 4.0 native database, 27 gig, 30 users total with 25 of them remote users

davmac1

You could ask your network gurus if Windows 2008 Server improves terminal service performance on printing.
If it does, you would have to upgrade executables once NAV fully supports Windows 2008 Server. Should not take them too long since 2008 is based on Vista SP1.

Fisherman

We're running remote locations on TS, Server 2003 with no issues in printing. We have a mixed bag of locally-attached and networked printers.

We have, however, had to go with multiple TS servers. After 10-15 sessions running NAV, we had noticeable performance decreases, and have started using TS running on VMWare.

themave

it really depends on what the printing load is, we don't have any problems with it either, since it is just an invoice at a time, but when I try to send a big report it does slow down. he is looking to print a high volumn of checks, which if the check stock is pre-printed with company logo, ect, and what actaully printes is just the vendor name address and basic check amount ect. then printing should be fine. sending plain text prints without graphics and a lot of detail will go very fast. Now if he is not using a pre-printed check stock, because he has 175 companies, and mulitple bank account, then he may be sending alot of data for each check, and then he would need to look to optimize printing.

Fisherman

very true. I had just thought that I neglected to mention something.

A lot of our networked printers are shared through a Windows Print Server, so spooling and spooling support services run on those servers, and not on the Terminal Servers itself. Since TS adds a printer instance for each logged-on session and printers that are attached to the client machine, maybe that load is bringing it down?

davmac1

How does VMWARE help? - I would have thought that would add an extra layer.
The Navision hardware sizing guide recommends 10 to 15 TS sessions per CPU and it also has a RAM sizing formula.
If the TS box has high CPU utilization or is having to page, then that will slow down performance - all stats available in the task manager.

Fisherman

VMWare is helping us cut down on the number of physical boxes... I have 3 app servers on one machine right now, and 2 TS's on another.

As far as disk access, the Virtual SCSI drivers in VMWare do a fair job on performance. The servers that we're using for Apps and TS are not connected to external SCSI arrays or our SAN, and only have built-in serial drives, so having a smaller section of disk space that can be treated as SCSI, with block protocols, does pretty well.

All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with the decision. Our physical footprint is smaller, our electricity usage is less, and we're still getting good performance.

themave

Fisherman wrote:

VMWare is helping us cut down on the number of physical boxes... I have 3 app servers on one machine right now, and 2 TS's on another.

As far as disk access, the Virtual SCSI drivers in VMWare do a fair job on performance. The servers that we're using for Apps and TS are not connected to external SCSI arrays or our SAN, and only have built-in serial drives, so having a smaller section of disk space that can be treated as SCSI, with block protocols, does pretty well.

All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with the decision. Our physical footprint is smaller, our electricity usage is less, and we're still getting good performance.

I have a question onthis, since I don't see how having two TS vmware on one box helps at all with performance, it seems like it can only hurt by adding a layer. what is the difference if you have one box with 30 ts users, or two virtual servers on the same box each serving 15 users. I get how virtual servers can help with different apps on one box, but this is the same app. Isn't the point of virtual servers to use the down time of one server to run other things, so if you had a separate DNS server, and a separate File Server, each having a lot of times when they don't do anything, combined on one box helps.

Fisherman

Because Windows controls things like message loops, event sinks, print spoolers, memory management, etc, and these background programs/services are often the causes of slow down on machines with adequate processor/disk/memory overhead. IE - if 30 TS users are printing documents, and it's giving my print spooler fits because of the volume of traffic, then having two VMs running 15 users and their own print spoolers may be better able to handle the load.

The server has excess resources that Windows won't use optimally. If you doubt that - remember that Windows will dynamically use as much memory as you can add to the server - not optimally, but it will use it

With VMs, I get two instances of Windows splitting the physical resources, and optimizing each segment of resources that they're allocated.

I know it's counterintuitive, but VM/Hyper-V products have shown improvements on resource allocation, especially memory, over straight windows installs on servers with a lot of memory overhead, with the exception of some memory-heavy applications like SQL Server, that have their own dynamic memory allocation support built into Windows Server.

[edit] -

Obviously, I'm not suggesting that VM will make resources where there were none, but we have had a great deal of luck with VM Ware so far.

themave

Thanks for the info, I will diffenately look into it, that is why I asked, since intuitively it seemed the opposite. I run two terminal servers, so will look into run two virtual servers on each. but then again, not having problems currently, so I have time to learn up on the subject.

Fisherman

NP -

Honestly, I think the best parts of VMware are the available redundancies, faster reboots, and smaller physical footprint that we can get out of it.

for example - I can reboot a virtual machine in around a minute, to the login prompt. I can't reboot my quad-processor SQL Server behemoth in anywhere near that time.

If I want another app server, I just take my image of my existing one, carve out some space, throw it on there, change the SID, and I'm off. No more buying another server, building it, installing ADCS, blah blah blah...

If a server goes down (physically), I take my image of that server, and apply it to another box. I'm back up within the hour.

You can also segregate support services like DNS, DHCP, AD, etc..., that don't require a lot of "oomph" to run, but that I don't want to run on the same server instance (because I don't want to reboot all of them if one of them gets hung).

Anyway - this thread isn't about VMWare. Apologies to the Op.

Denis_Petrov

Savatage wrote:

If it's a champ and works great - then why are you looking for another solution?

Is there something about terminal services that isn't working the way you would like?

We are looking for another solution because our champ might go under due to hurricanes.

Does anyone have a great working scheme for a backup office?
Thanks!

Savatage

so you're looking for more of a backup?

If the system goes down - you want a mirrored server to kick in?

Or do you want to place your server in another location (top of mountain) and still have quick and full access?

Denis_Petrov

Savatage wrote:

so you're looking for more of a backup?

If the system goes down - you want a mirrored server to kick in?

Or do you want to place your server in another location (top of mountain) and still have quick and full access?

=D>

We would consider both solutions but #1 seems to be a little more efficient in our case of heavy volume and printing (on blank check stock) thousands of checks per month.

Thanks!

Fisherman

There are companies who will provide failovers and off-site, warm backups for you, most of them also provide off-site network storage and hosting. We have one here in Louisville called Xodiax, for example, that has redundant power, redundant facilities, redundant communications, etc..., and can help you set up failovers on routers/switches, server backup/restoration, SQL Server replication for "warm" database failover, etc...

Do you also need database failover? what about routing tables, DHCP, DNS, etc...? In the event of a hurricane, how would users in that area get access to another terminal server, anyway? Don't they often take a large chunk of the communication grid offline to begin with? Is this simply a case where the terminal server is there and the users are elsewhere?

jlandeen

One other thing to consider with fail over sites (which was made painfully clear during the huge black out here in 2003) is that any failover sight be located physically far enough away from your primary physical site. It won't do you any good if both your primary & secondary site go down during the same event.