Actinic in a Terminal Services environment

[Nick Cook]

One for the wish list.....

We'd like to be able to throw away our in-house Server and PCs and just have Thin Clients or Terminals, connecting to remote virtual desktops (which can be provided by a variety of Service Providers these days).

However, this won't work because Actinic is not Terminal Services "aware".

The main issue (when using multi-user, Business Plus, licences) is that the licencing is per machine as opposed to per user.

In a virtual desktop / Terminal Services environment, multiple users are logging into the same physical machine, but with their own virtual desktop. This works great for most software apart from Actinic it seems.

Currently, the only way around this seems to be to have individual physical machines for each Actinic user licence.

Hope that makes sense.

Regards

Nick Cook

[fergusw]

You can run Actinic in this way, however the restriction is that only one person can run the program on the "server" at any time, and the users need the right permission levels to run the program.
Hope this helps.

[Nick Cook]

Hi Fergus

Thanks for your reply.

That's the problem that we would like to see addressed in a future release. If Actinic can be licenced on a truly "per user" basis, as opposed to per machine, we'd be able to outsource all of our I.T. infrastructure to a remote server provider. Our multiple users would then access Actinic via a Remote Desktop connection.

Cheers

Nick

[brucet]

That's an interesting idea, I will discuss it with our developers. The biggest challenge may be database locking. I'm not sure how the Actinic sync server would handle such an environment, but I will certainly look into it.

[chris ashdown]

I my case I would see the main problem as any failure of either the server/broadband would mean the company stops trading, where as in my case having office based server we can still handle both phone orders or enquiries if we loose connection to web or dedicated server

It's all a matter of risk, but I have found over the years that any moves be it sytem, machinery or personnel always take far longer to get working again than promised and Keeping it simple and inhouse as far as possible often pay's dividends over the latest high tech solutions, plus fault finding is far easier as you know who and when any changes were made

[Darren B]

I my case I would see the main problem as any failure of either the server/broadband would mean the company stops trading, where as in my case having office based server we can still handle both phone orders or enquiries if we loose connection to web or dedicated server

If the server hosting is outsourced and your broadband goes down you will still function online, just the moto side fails, but then having a second connection these days would cost a little more but give you redundancy - think of it as insurance

[fergusw]

having a second connection these days would cost a little more but give you redundancy - think of it as insurance

I strongly recommend a second broadband line for any serious internet based business that cannot afford or obtain a fixed line of suitable bandwidth.
I have yet to experience an ADSL service that has not suffered an outage at one time or another. A backup broadband line (with another provider) makes all the difference at these times.
There are some excellent routers out there that can even load balance between two broadband connections.

Regarding terminal services:
With RDP available on most platforms, including for iPhone, iTouch and iPad you could still run the system requested in the OP, even across 3/4G if required.

[chris ashdown]

Thinking more of big broadband outages like the Big Fire one, I think was last year raher than local line as most people would automatically have either two lines or a 3g facility

Just think back to latest SagPay fiasco to calculate danger of putting all your eggs in one basket or remote facility unless you have to , a simple so they said update to there software that dragged on for a week or more

[Mike Hughes]

Or even line failures.

Last week both our BT phone lines went down. Apparently the cable self-destructed (or something like that, it isn't very clear). I'm told it affected over 400 people in the area.

BT got the lines back in 4-5 days but only on a temporary basis. It seems they need to lay a new cable under the A41 and have to negotiate it's closure with the local council.

Luckily, my broadband line stayed up, even if only at a slowish 2mbps. How this worked while everyone elses in the area went down (and all the lines were dead) I haven't a clue but wasn't inclined to ask in case the they decided to take a look and make things worse. (Line attenuation dropped from 26db to 53db for anyone interested in the technical side).

So, I agree with Chris. Unless your backup lines go in different directions to different exchanges then you're not really reducing your risk much. I use 3G as a backup and was happy to know it was there just in case the broadband also gave up the ghost.

Mike

[chris ashdown]

Pre-hapse we could use the forum to monitor all sorts of outages so we could have data to help us make risk assesments
Peope could input

Server downtime
Phone and Broadband downtime and reason
ISP downtime
PSP downtime
VOIP downtime

Guess it will not happen, but what the hell I asked