Deployment options -vApp or VPN?

Hi Community, we are just at server refresh time and considering moving our servers to a data center having been On-Prem until now.
The question I have is who is running Visual remotely and how do you have it set up?

We are considering SQL server in the data center with an SDWAN connection to our office network and thick install on machines.

Testing has found that a VPN to our server yields very poor performance, so maybe a published app will be more useful for those who aren't on either network and working remotely.

Even if you can point me to a better forum that might have already covered some of this?

Thanks

Adam

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charles-hooper

HI Adam,

Visual modules tend to be extremely chatty, meaning that there tends to be an extremely high amount of communication round trips between the computers that are running the Visual module EXE files and the database servers. As a result, Visual runs poorly when the computers running the Visual module EXE files are not located in the same LAN as the database servers. To avoid the poor performance problem when people are located remotely from the database servers, you will likely need to rely on a solution that requires Microsoft Remote Desktop licenses so that all of the chatty communication stays in the same LAN as the database servers, and only screen updates are sent over WAN / VPN connections. Four of the common solutions are listed below:

Microsoft Remote Desktop (all running remote programs appear inside a single application's window)
Microsoft RemoteApp (all running remote programs appear as individual application windows, giving the appearance that the programs are running locally on the remote computer) - this seems to be the most popular option.
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops with published applications (all running remote programs appear as individual application windows, giving the appearance that the programs are running locally on the remote computer, all Citrix servers located in your data center)
Citrix (Cloud) DaaS with published applications (all running remote programs appear as individual application windows, giving the appearance that the programs are running locally on the remote computer, Citrix servers in the cloud handle the initial authentication and application icon publishing, Citrix servers located in your data center run the published applications)

We used various Citrix solutions (for example XenApp) to remotely run Visual from our data center for roughly 20 years. Last year I was on a team that evaluated replacements for our old Citrix XenApp solution. We spent months testing Microsoft RemoteApp, but eventually implemented Citrix (Cloud) DaaS with a Citrix StoreFront server in our data center (StoreFront server was used to improve reliability, reduce first application start up time, and eliminate need to two-factor authentication for computers that are already on the LAN/WAN).

The VMIUG-TEC Google Group is likely a better forum for discussing this type of topic. The VMIUGLIST (generally discussion of Visual's built-in functionality) Google Group and VMIUG-TEC (generally IT / techy discussion that covers functionality that is not necessarily Visual's built-in functionality) Google groups were started roughly 23 years ago on the Yahoo groups platform and generally still have a fair amount of discussion of Visual topics, so you might also ask your question there. If you are interested in joining those groups, make certain to provide some indication in the join request to show that you are a current Visual user (your name, company you work for, and your job position should be sufficient). You may sign up for the groups using this page: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/vmiug

The VMIUG-TEC discussion thread that I started last year on this topic is accessible at the below link, once you are a member of the VMIUG-TEC group. In that thread, several people responded with suggestions related to using and implementing Microsoft RemoteApp:
https://groups.google.com/g/vmiug-tec/c/cQ9qqsiQ0ew/m/LbyUaKfZAAAJ

Charles Hooper
Senior Software Engineer
Meadville Forging Company

unknown

Adam,

I used to run Visual in Citrix, but migrated to Azure about a year and a half ago and couldn't be happier. Moved DB's to an Azure SQL instance and deployed Visual as full client in Azure Virtual Desktops, so install is local to the db. Users get the Azure Remote Desktop app and are subscribed to production and dev host pools. Scaling plans in affect so host only run when needed for load, only pay for active systems. Integrated with OneDrive. Thousands per month in cost savings over Citrix servers. Very happy with the tools in Azure to manage the systems/VM, databases, and installation.

Did have about 6 months of tweaking the configuration in Azure to get better performance. Started with local profiles but moved to roaming, had to optimize networking and resources on the host pool VM's. Running very well for a deployment covering physical locations from central Europe to US/Canada west coast.

The only issue I've run into is that you can't take a copy of an Azure SQL DB and put it on SQL server. You could get around this by using a full SQL server, but I really like the SQL instance. Separates me from having to manage the server or database engine but gives me all the features. I don't mind not that Infor and or business partner cannot run a copy of our db. Not a big deal for me. I could backpack it, but I have custom triggers that use stored procedures that are not integral to the db. I could get around that too by copying the stored procedures into the Visual DB. If it is ever a big issue I may try that in a test copy.

Todd Dickinson

ERP Technical Manger

L. B. Foster Company

gbica

Adam,

I was also interested in running the database as an Azure SQL PaaS, but Infor said this is not a supported configuration. Did you go ahead and do it as an unsupported configuration or did Infor tell you something different than us?

gbica

Our configuration is as such:

Everything hosted on Azure US. We are using the full Remote Desktop Services suite, including Remote Gateway, Web Interface, RDS License Server, Session Hosts, Broker. Architecture is here. All are setup as Infrastructure as a service VMs (IaaS) as per Infor supported configuration. We use site to site VPN to access the server sessions from office and RD Gateway for anyone external. Dev and Test environments are also configured there, on an Azure Dev/Test subscription. Cost: RDS assigned user licenses, and cost to run Azure infrastructure.

Note that this is one solution in many. Make sure this is something supported by Infor if you intend to get support from them.

unknown

Hi Charles,

Your response is very helpful, I am a member of the VMIUG groups, prior to posting I did a search but didn't see anything on deployment. Using slightly different terminology, I will follow the link and have a look.

I think remote App is likely the path we will head down, but wanted to back it up with some others real world experience which you have indicated.

Thanks for your input

unknown

Hi Todd,
Thanks for the response, full Azure install and desktops is probably a leap too far into the unknown for us but good to know its a future solution if we want to go that way.

charles-hooper

Hi Adam,

A search of the VMIUG-TEC site for RemoteApp should locate several additional discussion threads that might be helpful for your deployment of RemoteApp.( groups.google.com/.../search ).

If you use the same network username and password on multiple computers (such as shop floor computers), you will need to use the Group Policy Editor to set up the servers that actually run the published programs so that multiple computers may be logged in simultaneously using the same network username and password - I might have mentioned that in the discussion thread that I linked to earlier. This Group Policy setting may then cause problems when you want to remote desktop into a server for maintenance of that server, so to avoid that problem, I suggest setting up the RemoteApp servers from the start in their own Active Directory OU that is created in the OU for your other servers. You will have 90 days for testing before the Remote Desktop user / device CALs must be installed in the RemoteApp system.

Charles Hooper
Senior Software Engineer
Meadville Forging Company

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