ArcGIS with Citrix- Performance and Known Issues

SarahBurnham · ‎06-15-2010

Hi

We are currently looking to deploy ArcGIS on Citrix across our Authority. Does anybody have any experience of running ArcGIS on Citrix as opposed to Desktop clients? We are especially interested in known issues/ performance and optimum settings for improving speed, which initial testing has shown to be very slow. We will be running on a minimum version of 9.3, but possibly 10.

Any help or advise would be much appreciated!

Thanks

AaronHixson · ‎07-03-2010

We are in the process of doing the same thing with ArcGIS 10. We are putting it on a Citrix6 Farm on Server 2008 R2 servers.

To solve the printing issue, we have created a print server that is in the data center that is local to our Citrix farms. This allows the print jobs to off load the terminal servers quickly. When then have the print servers print directly to the local/network printers inthe various offices directly across the WAN. In our testing phase this is what yielded us the best results for printing.

Still, I was hoping there would be others with a Citrix 6 and ArcMap 10 environment that I could do more reading on so I can know how to optimize my Citrix installation to get the best performance for my environment.

jduval · ‎07-20-2010

We have moved to XenApp 6.0 in June 2010 and currently using 9.3 SP1. We want to move to ArcGIS 10.0 but am waiting to hear from ESRI if it has been tested/supported in this kind of Citrix Environment (OS is Windows Server 2008 SR2 64-bit). We currently only have 11 GIS users which are the only users on this server. Performance-wise, it's good for mapping and general analysis. I find it slow on editing and the help menu has issues (can't access from programs).

I found out today that because the license server is on Citrix, our local desktops/laptops won't be able to borrow (in ArcGIS 10) any licenses because it cannot directly connect to the license server. (The Citrix farm is in another city) This is a big drawback for us as we have users that go out in the field where there is no cellphone/internet coverage.

I'm interested in the comments in this thread...

Julie

GISP

Anonymous User · ‎07-21-2010

I found out today that because the license server is on Citrix, our local desktops/laptops won't be able to borrow (in ArcGIS 10) any licenses because it cannot directly connect to the license server. (The Citrix farm is in another city) This is a big drawback for us as we have users that go out in the field where there is no cellphone/internet coverage.

I am not able to personally test this without access to a Citrix environment, but I double checked with a couple of sources that say you should be able to borrow a license from the license manager that is running in the Citrix environment as long as the client can connect to it. Maybe you could provide more details (error messages, connectivity issues, etc.)

GregoryPonto1 · ‎07-21-2010

Julie - Don't give up hope:

1. Take a look at the following KB Article in response to a bug we've found with ArcInfo license borrowing:
http://resources.arcgis.com/content/kbase?fa=articleShow&d=38021

2. If you are trying to borrow over latent connections you may also want to look at:
http://resources.arcgis.com/content/kbase?fa=articleShow&d=35659

We do support ArcGIS Desktop 10 and License Manager 10 in Citrix environments. For that matter, the Citrix display rendered on your local system is not actually running on your local system but is in fact running on the Citrix server itself. Therefore the only connection to be concerned about is that between the Citrix server and the server running ArcGIS License Manager. If you can consume you should also be able to borrow, which makes me feel you are actually running into the borrow bug addressed the the first URL above.

Let us know what happens.

jduval · ‎07-22-2010

Hi, we haven't installed ArcGIS10 on the Citrix Environment yet, so I have not actually tested whether the borrowing would work or not. The IT managing our Citrix servers wanted me to investigate whether the license borrowing would work. ESRI Support said that my local desktop must be able to connect to the license manager.

My local desktop cannot connect to the Citrix server that is acting as the license manager. I connect to the Citrix servers via an internet portal.

What happens when I borrow a license? Does it create a license file? If my Citrix desktop borrowed the license, would I be able to copy it to my local desktop and use it?

I'm hoping to implement ArcGIS10 within the next week - I will keep you posted.

Julie

GISP

jduval · ‎08-10-2010

We are in the process of doing the same thing with ArcGIS 10. We are putting it on a Citrix6 Farm on Server 2008 R2 servers.

To solve the printing issue, we have created a print server that is in the data center that is local to our Citrix farms. This allows the print jobs to off load the terminal servers quickly. When then have the print servers print directly to the local/network printers inthe various offices directly across the WAN. In our testing phase this is what yielded us the best results for printing.

Still, I was hoping there would be others with a Citrix 6 and ArcMap 10 environment that I could do more reading on so I can know how to optimize my Citrix installation to get the best performance for my environment.

Hi ahixson, we are now running ArcGIS10 on XenApp6 running on Win Server 2008 R2 Std. ArcMap is very slow in performance - it sometimes takes up to 10 minutes just to add a data layer. Have you experienced abnormally slow performance? I have contacted ESRI support and it looks to be a Ctirix issue. I'm hoping ESRI will pursue this since I keep getting told that ESRI support ArcGIS 10 on Citrix.

Julie

GISP

KarenGrassi · ‎08-10-2010

I am not able to personally test this without access to a Citrix environment, but I double checked with a couple of sources that say you should be able to borrow a license from the license manager that is running in the Citrix environment as long as the client can connect to it. Maybe you could provide more details (error messages, connectivity issues, etc.)

If you can you may want to host the desktop license manager on a server that is not associated with your CITRIX farm but accessible to it. That is the solution that we at Miami-Dade County utilize and it works great.

GregoryPonto1 · ‎08-20-2010

Julie -

Is the poor performance on client side systems only? For example, if you can find a way to remote into the Citrix box (Win2k8) using RDP, do you find the performance remains slow? Also, running Task Manager on the Citrix box, how many ArcMap.exe's do you see running? ArcMap is a pretty hefty product it is quite easy to overwhelm a Citrix server with only a few clients.

jduval · ‎08-25-2010

Julie -

Is the poor performance on client side systems only? For example, if you can find a way to remote into the Citrix box (Win2k8) using RDP, do you find the performance remains slow? Also, running Task Manager on the Citrix box, how many ArcMap.exe's do you see running? ArcMap is a pretty hefty product it is quite easy to overwhelm a Citrix server with only a few clients.

ESRI Support asked to me to test that as well. When a user used RDP to remote in, the peformance was 'normal'.

When I run Task Manager, I only see my own apps running. We only have 10 users (clients) on a 16 CPU and 12GB Ram server (new since June 2010). The CPU usage rarely goes beyond 10%, memory usage is usually around 5GB. Performance was also extremely slow when only 1 user (administrator) was logged on. I don't think we are overwhelming our Citrix server...

Thanks for your feedback! Any other suggestions to try?

Julie

GISP