I have an Access app that I provide for free to nonprofit food pantries.
so far I have a few hundred installs. Generally they operate in a
single physical location and have only 2-3-4 PCs ethernet attached.

One potential user has people at geographically dispersed locations that
need access to the application. typically I would do this for one or
two by deploying an old PC in the corner, connected to the Internet and
use PC Anywhere or similar for connectivity.

In this case they may need up to 10 concurrent external connections.
All have high speed internet access.

I am guessing that a server with terminal services would be the way to
go? If correct, can someone tell me EXACTLY what hardware and software
is needed, how hard to configure and where I can get more information.

Of course, if you have an alternative, I am open.

Bob

On Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:33:43 -0500, BobAlston <bobalston9 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com>
wrote:

Correct.

No idea as to the software side other than non profit groups can
usually get Windows and many other vendors software for next to
nothing. Try Techsoup.org if they are in the USA. But they might
already know this.

Now as far as the server goes don't worry about getting the absolute
fastest machine with oodles of RAM and fast, fast hard drive. Heck
for ten users a five year old server with 2 Gb of RAM would likely be
sufficient. Of course RAM is relatively cheap so 4 Gb of RAM would
be ok.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/

On Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:33:43 -0500, BobAlston <bobalston9 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com>
wrote:

The Access runtime should work quite well on TS as well.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/

On 6/23/2011 2:21 PM, Tony Toews wrote:

Thanks Tony.

anyone know of real good sources of info for installing and configuring
Terminal Services???

bob

On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:37:51 -0500, BobAlston <bobalston9 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com>
wrote:

It doesn't take much. Just a Windows Server OS and some licensing
information and you're done. Especially with just ten users. By
licensing information I mean you start with Windows Server and then,
somehow, do the licensing thing and enable the TS for more than two
users. Note that Windows Server allows two users to access the
server via TS/RDP at the same time. I administer my web server in
that fashion.

Now as to what are good sources? I have no idea. For what you're
looking for though the MS website ought to be sufficient.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/

On Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:33:43 -0500, BobAlston <bobalston9 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com>
wrote:

BTW given that you distribute your app for free non non profit groupis
I'd be happy to provide you with a free license to the Auto FE Updater
web edition once it's ready. This will allow users to download zip
files from a website containing updated FE Access database files.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/

BobAlston <bobalston9 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote in
news:iu04ma$r1a$1 (AT) dont-email (DOT) me:

It's so simple there is almost nothing to it. Buy the CALs, install
your application, and then connect from the client PCs.

Note that if you're using Office 2007 or later, you'll be much more
restricted in what your users can do, and in which versions you can
install on the Terminal Server (only the Enterprise version can be
installed).

It's remarkably easy to set up and configure, mostly because IT'S
ALREADY SET UP AND CONFIGURED for every version of Windows Server
starting with Windows 2000 -- all you have to change is the
licensing to allow non-admin connections.

You may have to deal with authentication issues, too. I'm not too
sure on that, as I've always implemented a Terminal Server within a
domain environment where the users were already set up, and all I
had to do was add them to the terminal server user groups.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
contact via website only http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

BobAlston <bobalston9 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote in
news:itu1l5$a6b$1 (AT) dont-email (DOT) me:

Tony has pretty much answered this. I would recommend you start with
as much RAM as you can reasonably afford, and not worry as much
about CPU cycles. In other words, an older server could carry this
function fairly well, as long as you give it sufficient RAM.
However, for 10 users, as Tony says, 2GBs is likely to be fine
(that's what I had running on a WTS box in 2004 with the exact same
user population), though, as Tony says, if you can add more, that's
always better.

The other issue is Internet bandwidth. It needs to be decent at the
server, and it would be better if it's not asynchronous. That is,
most consumer-level Internet access has fast download speeds but
really slow upload (e.g., my cable Internet access has 5Mbps+
download, but only 600K upload). For a Remote Desktop User, what you
want is something closer to symmetrical. In fact, my guess is that
the WTS sends more data to the client than the client sends back, so
a the server end, an asynchronous Internet connection is going to be
configured in the wrong direction, with limited "upload" capability
to send updates back to the client workstations.

I've never set up a Terminal Server except with synchronous Internet
connections, so never had to worry about this problem. The 2004
setup that's very similar to yours was over a 1.5Mbps T1, with the
clients coming in from 4 DSL connections at 384K (I don't know if
those were asynchronous or not, actually, but if they were, it would
have been in the right direction).

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
contact via website only http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

On 6/24/2011 3:08 PM, David-W-Fenton wrote:
can you explain the above a bit more? I don't understand what you are
saying.

bob

On 24 Jun 2011 20:21:29 GMT, "David-W-Fenton"
<NoEmail (AT) SeeSignature (DOT) invalid> wrote:

Excellent point.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/