Citrix Spead Problem

[Jeff B.]

Situation: users have a secured shortcut on desktop. Some users can only
access our network via Checkpoint and then access email via Citrix. In any
event, this shortcut is not in Citrix. It does work but it takes 30-45
minutes to pull up the database. I can put the shortcut on the server and
map a drive to it, then double click the shortcut. It works in terms of
opening and logging in, but the form is extremely slow. What can I do to fix
this problem.

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

I'm going to take a stab at this one and suggest that it is a Citrix
problem. To test that theory, try a standard administrative logon using
Windows Terminal Services. It should take almost no time (like 10 seconds)
to open the application using the shortcut you've already placed on your
desktop.

Citrix can be quirky and come up with problems, especially if there are lots
of concurrent users. I've worked with perhaps 20 to 25 users in Citrix and
had no problems, but had similar slowness problems with 30 users. I'm not
familiar with the Checkpoint VPN, but it could be an interaction as well. If
the test above yields similar slow results, I'll point the finger at
Checkpoint.

I have used thin clients with Access for at least 8 or 9 years without
problems on the Access side, other than not having a split application with
users not having their own copy of the front-end in their own folder. That
hasn't been a speed issue though. It was a corruption issue caused by
Citrix.

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

Situation: users have a secured shortcut on desktop. Some users can only
access our network via Checkpoint and then access email via Citrix. In any
event, this shortcut is not in Citrix. It does work but it takes 30-45
minutes to pull up the database. I can put the shortcut on the server and
map a drive to it, then double click the shortcut. It works in terms of
opening and logging in, but the form is extremely slow. What can I do to fix
this problem.

I suspect the problem is the location of the front end. The front
end should be located either on the Citrix server (although admins
generally don't like that) or on a file server on the same LAN as the
Citrix server.

You also state that the users have a "secured shortcut." Does each
user have their own copy of the FE? If not

I'm also wondering if the FE they are accessing is on their home drive
or on their local system which could be thousands of kilometres from
the Citrix server. In which case it's rather pointless to use the
Citrix Server.

I'm not familiar with Checkpoint so can't comment there.

FWIW the Auto FE Updater works well with Citrix. I specifically
created the Auto FE Updater utility so that I could make changes to
the FE MDE as often as I wanted and be quite confident that the next
time someone went to run the app that it would pull in the latest
version. For more info on the errors or the free Auto FE Updater
utility see http://www.autofeupdater.com to keep the FE on each PC up
to date.

In a Terminal Server or Citrix environment the Auto FE Updater now
supports creating a directory named after the user on a server. Given
a choice put the FE on the Citrix server to reduce network traffic and
to avoid having to load objects over the network which can be somewhat
sluggish.

Tony

 

[David W. Fenton]

The front
end should be located either on the Citrix server (although admins
generally don't like that) or on a file server on the same LAN as
the Citrix server.

Most servers built since 2004 or earlier have GB NICs so
theoretically, there should be no difficulty in providing lightning
fast access from the Citrix to a back end on a file server on the
other end of a GB connection (i.e,. 1000BaseT, as opposed to the
standard 100BaseT LANs we've all become accustomed to since the mid
to late 90s).