W elcome to HowToNetworking. FREE resource that provides a step by step guide to setup Network, VPN, Remote Access and Internet Sharing. Latest trending topics being covered on ZDNet including Reviews, Tech Industry, Security, Hardware, Apple, and Windows. Do you need Citrix, or is Microsoft Remote Desktop enough If you want to build a Microsoft Remote Desktop Session Host based desktop and application delivery platform, are. Windows Server 2. R2 SP1 enough, or do you also need to add a product like Citrix Xen. Install Remote Desktop Services Windows 2012 Work Group Definition' title='Install Remote Desktop Services Windows 2012 Work Group Definition' />App It has been six years since I wrote my last Do you need Citrix article. Amazingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, I still get asked that question quite often. While this article specifically focuses on Citrix Xen. App, the features missing from Microsoft products that Xen. App provides are also provided by Quest v. Workspace, Ericom Power. Term, 2. X and a few others. Install Remote Desktop Services Windows 2012 Work Group Definition' title='Install Remote Desktop Services Windows 2012 Work Group Definition' />Are we still talking about ICA versus RDP The good news is that within the past six years, Microsoft made many, many improvements to Remote Desktop Protocol RDP. In fact, now you can even claim that RDP is usable and say it with a straight face Of course, Citrix also made many improvements to ICA during that time, including changing its name from ICA to HDX. So, while RDP is great today, HDX is still more advanced. Youll never notice the difference if youre just using productivity apps on a LAN. But if you want to use applications that have a lot of moving objects, videos and Flash, then youll definitely want to use HDX instead of RDP. The same is true for slower WAN connections. Citrix HDX does a better job scaling down to slower connections than RDP does. And the higher level versions of Citrix Xen. App also include the Citrix Branch Repeater capabilities, which are enterprise class, network optimization virtual appliances that can really make your HDX sing over slow connections. Actual Keylogger Registration Code Crack. Another thing thats still true and perhaps even more relevant today is that Microsoft only officially supports Windows and Mac clients for RDP. Citrix, on the other hand, has ICA clients now called Citrix Receivers for Windows, Mac, Linux, Black. Berry, Android, i. OS, HTML5 and Java, among others. Any of those platforms for pure Microsoft environments requires a third party client. What about the real features If you look at the product feature list on Microsoft. Remote Desktop capability list for Server 2. R2 SP1 actually looks pretty good. Microsoft includes load balancing, the ability to route users to a server where they have a disconnected session, a Web interface, an RDP Secure Sockets Layer gateway, seamless windows and app publishing, and the list goes on. Citrix, Quest and others have also continued to add features and provide more than Microsoft. If you need only the features listed, however, should you stick with the out of the box offerings The main problem with using a pure Microsoft setup is that in its world, each server needs to be configured on its own. The company doesnt really have the concept of a single, central database that all of the servers use for configuration management. So, if you want 1. If you want to publish Microsoft Word across five servers, you need to configure that on five individual servers. Of course, anything thats stored in the registry can be configured via policies, and in fact thats what Microsoft assumes youre going to do. The problem with this, though, is that Windows Group Policy Management capabilities dont make it easy. Think about how complex the policies are You have to build out so many different levels, then deal with permissions and inheritance, then push them out to the individual servers, etc. And then if you just want to quickly see a setting for a group of servers, you have to go through that whole resultant set thing. Its just really mucky and not good. Compare that with the real third party tools with real admin consoles. You can easily see and view changes via an interface that was designed for this. Finally, because the Microsoft Remote Desktop components are all separate, getting your environment up and running can be a nightmare with just Microsoft tools. Citrix, Quest and other vendors provide a more straightforward process for your initial installation. So, by now its pretty obvious that Im not a fan of using only the in box Microsoft Remote Desktop Session Host unless you have a very small or a very simple environment. Sure, youll save money by not using an additional product like Citrix Xen. App or Quest v. Workspace, but at what cost ABOUT THE AUTHOR Brian Madden is an independent industry analyst and blogger, known throughout the world as an opinionated, supertechnical desktop virtualization expert. He has written several books and more than 1,0. Maddens blog,Brian. Madden. com, receives millions of visitors per year and is a leading source for conversation, debate and discourse about the application and desktop virtualization industry. He is also the creator of Bri. Forum, the premier independent application delivery technical conference.