I’ve been working on the System Architecture for a Citrix based enterprise GIS system, and in the process have dug up a bunch of ESRI whitepapers on the topic. If you run ArcGIS in a Citrix environment, these are some good reading…
System Design Strategies – ESRI Whitepaper (PDF Jan 2007)
This is the mothership for all ESRI system design topics. Check pages 8-8-3 for the WTS/Citrix server sizing models (partially shown below)
According to the model, you can run 45 ArcMap sessions on an Intel Xeon with 2 Dual Core 3Ghz (5160) CPUs and 16GB of RAM. In case your were wondering – you can pick up a Dell PowerEdge 1950 with this configuration for ~$10,000. And if you want to be really cool, you could go with the quad core CPU’s for about ~$2,000 more. RAM starts to get pretty pricy when you go much above 16GB, so while you likely can’t stuff 90 users onto a quad core system, for $2,000 more, your 45 users will have a lot more power at their disposal.
Citrix / WTS Support Overview - Whitepaper (HTML – Feb 2006)
This covers the main topics, including how to configure multiple products (ArcView/ArcEditor) to run on the same server.
Force ArcMap to close when logging off Citrix - ESRI Tech Article
Printing from ArcGIS on Citrix – ESRI Whitepaper (PDF – Oct 2006)
System Architecture to Support Printing on Citrix - Citrix Whitepaper (PDF – Nov 2001)
Metaframe Printing Optimization Techniques - Citrix Whitepaper (PDF – Feb 2004)
I’ll update this post as I find more resources.
