How many concurrent users on Citrix and MS Access?

[Bonno Hylkema]

My customer wants to make one centralized database from three regional
databases, using Citrix. This will lead to one database with about 50
concurrent users, of whom 20 will be updating data and 30 will be reading
data. The update frequency is moderate.

Is this going to work? What are the chances of the database getting
corrupted? What will be the responsiveness of the application? Do you know
of any references or technical papers on the subject?

Thanking in advance, Bonno Hylkema

 

[John Vinson]

My customer wants to make one centralized database from three regional
databases, using Citrix. This will lead to one database with about 50
concurrent users, of whom 20 will be updating data and 30 will be reading
data. The update frequency is moderate.

Is this going to work? What are the chances of the database getting
corrupted? What will be the responsiveness of the application? Do you know
of any references or technical papers on the subject?

Thanking in advance, Bonno Hylkema

One of my clients is using this architecture - or pretty close. They
have some 100 users, 20-30 updating during busy periods.

It's VITAL to use the database splitter; there should be one shared
"backend" database containing the tables, and multiple copies of the
"frontend" containing links to the tables, and all the forms, reports,
etc.

In a Citrix setup, you should have a separate logon folder for each
user, containing that user's copy of the frontend. The backend should
be on the same machine or on a reasonably robust server machine, on a
fast stable LAN to the Citrix server.

Corruption is always a possibility with any database, especially
file-server databases like Access. See the hints at

http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/corruptmdbs.htm

for suggestions to prevent and recover from corruption, and of course
keep up to date backups at all times!

Do note that having two Access databases linked over a WAN (Citrix or
any other) is risky indeed: performance will be very bad and
corruption all but certain. The databases should all be on the same
fast, stable LAN; or you should use a "safe" manner of linking, such
as Internet Replication.


John W. Vinson[MVP]