Sage 100

Looking for some practical advice here. Have a client on MAS200 4.3, they have 5 locations across the country, all connected to the main location via T3 WAN. MAS is installed at the main location and the remote offices are running MAS through Terminal Services so the printing of crystal forms is faster. They want to get away from having to open a terminal session just for MAS but also need to print to their remote printers. Print speed is of the essence here because they are in a POS situation and the customer is waiting for the Sales Order to print. FWIW they are upgrading their infrastructure with faster WAN connections, not sure how much it will help though.

I strongly suggest they stay with the Terminal server. It depends on the OS Terminal Server is running on (i.e. Server 2008, 2012 etc). The newer servers allow for very slick modes so that launching MAS looks just like running any other local desktop application. IF they try and run MAS truly over the wan, any performance or disconnects is going to leave alot of hung processes, potential in use files, potential data corruption, very slow performance, especially with crystal based stuff etc.

Sounds like Citrix should be considered as it offers more options.

Are they using the ProvideX IO service? This significantly improve printing performance over a wan. How far are the remote offices from the central office? If they are considering a vpn, performance is degraded as the distance increases.

Even with the Providex IO service, with any volume of data, the printing performance will suck.

Based on my experience I agree with @Mark, stay with the Terminal server.

If you are going the RDP route then first create a VPN tunnel to the firewall. if you are considering Citrix then you may also want to look at VMWare View... much cheaper.

BTDT - Got the t-shirt. The only way to go is RDP. If the customer wants to go with a thin client tell them it's on a per project basis and you disclaim and reporting speed. If there is any serious printing going on it's the only way to go. Have had some brilliant IT folk ignore my advice that printing won't work over thin client then have to listen to how Sage 100 sucks, etc after they ignore my advice and the users start complaining about that AR history report that takes three hours to print.

I've not personally tried this but have heard good things about using it with RDP/Terminal Services and Citrix (which is kinda the same thing) http://www.thinprint.com/Default.aspx

@Doug is spot on with the recommendation to use a VPN tunnel for the RDP connection, it also helps with PCI compliance. They should also connect their printers via the VPN so they are not dependent on the RDP connection, that will save some headaches too.

We also use VPN tunnels between locations and for any printer used by more than one desktop, we put a queue on the terminal server. For our clients, this has worked well. YMMV.

Thanks everyone. They have a 2008 Terminal Server avail, need to encourage them to get all users on it. All WAN connections are private, so no need for a VPN, no printing is happening through RDP, all printers are installed on the terminal server. Center of the WAN is in Southern California, remote offices are in Las Vegas, Sacramento and Chicago. Sounds like they are already doing everything possible. Will discuss with their IT staff.

A couple of other things to consider. 1. There is a compnay called Ericom that has a clientless browser based function that sits on top of terminal server. It renders all print files to a PDF. They also have a version that works like Citrix 2. If they are clean Sage 100, Blymobile from Blytheco actually worked and looked pretty good for a single tenant location. I know it has issues with MD products.