Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Virtual Server

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Virtual Server

    Hello

    Currently we develop exclusively for the desktop.

    One of our customers wants to run his V10.5 application (10 user runtime) from a virtual sever.

    Will it work, are there likely to be any performance issues, and finally has anyone transferred a A5 desktop application to a virtual server?

    Kind Regards

    Alex
    Database Software Solutions Limited
    www.dbasesolution.co.uk
    http://www.precise360.co.uk
    PRECISE360 -
    LYNCHPIN -

    #2
    Re: Virtual Server

    There has been talk of this from a few people. I do not know of any that have it working.
    Virtual server would be putting all the data in a web site/dedicated server on web/VPS.
    You would then need to figure out how to connect to it solidly.
    I had thought of assigning a drive letter to the web address??
    Hopefully, someone will come with more knowledge than I have about that.
    Dave Mason
    [email protected]
    Skype is dave.mason46

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Virtual Server

      Alex,

      If the virtual server is a copy of the existing server that the application is running on then I don't see there being any problems. A virtual server should look exactly the same to any workstations/clients connecting to it as a physical server.

      To be honest, I've not tried this, but have run a network optimized system on a NAS (with performance problems attributed to the NAS) and a stand-alone desktop app on a virtual PC with no problems.

      Basically, for desktop apps, the server is just a file repository.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Virtual Server

        Are you not meaning virtual desktop, not virtual server?
        I am in the process of setting up a hosted server (RAS) running Alpha desktop applications with MDM to most registered mobile devices or browsers.
        I have to be set up and running by the weekend. An application is going with our sales partner to show waiting clients around the country on Tuesday.
        I will post back when that is up and running. If all goes according to plan.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Virtual Server

          Hi Jon
          The client has a subsidiary which has a Access 2003 application running on a virtual server. My thinking is that if you can take an Access desktop application and port it on to a virtual server, then surely we can do the same with an Alpha application.

          I will have to check how they are running the Access and come back to you.

          Why anyone wants to run a mission critical application on somebody's else's server, dependent upon the owner for ensuring it is remains always fit for purposes, and relying on average UK broadband speeds to power it, puzzles me. I just don't get it.

          Thanks everyone for your input so far.
          Alex
          Database Software Solutions Limited
          www.dbasesolution.co.uk
          http://www.precise360.co.uk
          PRECISE360 -
          LYNCHPIN -

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Virtual Server

            Ah, so they want to run a desktop app on a hosted virtual server. This is doable using terminal services or similar. Ray, who posted above and Martin Cole often chip in to conversations on this topic. I've started to experiment in this area especially since MS introduced remote apps with server 2012 R2, but time has prevented me from getting very far.

            Have a look at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/w...erver/ee236407 for more details on 'Remote Desktop Services'

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Virtual Server

              We set up TS on Windows Server 2008R2 last spring - 5 users in office and at home, and two in very distant offices - allocated 2 GB RAM for each user. Works great once set up. The server however is ours and under our management. And yes Alex, the internet connection and integrity is the key thread that makes or breaks this solution.
              Mike W
              __________________________
              "I rebel in at least small things to express to the world that I have not completely surrendered"

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Virtual Server

                Jon correct, Martin's current client server is owned by them. It works very well.
                With a hosted solution a user with existing 3 or 150 devices can be up and running in short time, with no capital expenditure if they do not want nor own a server. Of course there are rental considerations but then both my site installation/support charges to the user and their hardware and maintenance is almost nil.

                Alex you may be on a different page here.
                With thin client, whether the server is hosted or owned and maintained by your customer, that is up to you (or them)
                I have never done virtualization before but having seen Martins' and now rolling out new sales (hopefully)
                With hosted I can supply my software to clients regardless of their hardware or devices. if they have their own server they can use that.
                From what I have seen so far , I can publish the app on the host, register 5-15 client devices wherever in the world each is, and have them running the application before lunchtime without leaving my desk.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Virtual Server

                  Hi Alex we have a number of our clients running our desktop application on cloud servers. The performance hit is much the same as moving from a local copy to a LAN server based copy but of course is much more dependent on the performance of their broadband connection. My other concern is always that if they lose their broadband access they lose their system. If you want to discuss it further send me a PM.
                  Bob
                  Bob Whitaker

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Virtual Server

                    Bob,
                    Can you elaborate just a bit on the "basic" mechanics of operating from the cloud?
                    Do you map a drive? Use shadowed? any other? Issues that may arise?
                    I think a lot of us would appreciate any insight.
                    Dave Mason
                    [email protected]
                    Skype is dave.mason46

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Virtual Server

                      Dave, I have chatted with Bob who confirms these are hosted servers with MS server 2012 R2 and TS.
                      As discussed in post 4 and as Mike uses (but his with an on site server) and what Jon correctly assessed and Alex just cant understand.
                      The newer systems offer web access to the desktop app, from mac and handhelds without MS Server and the CALs.
                      I tried 2X which still requires T-Cals (unless you have a single user) and two separate systems , one for RAS layer and another for MDM (mobile device management).
                      There is absolutely no point mirorring it will probably be slower - your "terminal " is directly connect the the server drive, nothing faster , no network transmission.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Virtual Server

                        Hi - just to confirm what Ray has said. The solutions we have used are essentially terminal services sessions on a server hosted by a "cloud" provider. They work very well and the main things that need to be remembered are that it is necessary to have printer drivers loaded on the server that relate to the printers being used at the remote end and that if you wish to use email from within the app then a suitable email client must be installed and that if you use the rtf export function in Alpha, which we do, a programme such as Word which opens RTF files must be installed on the server. It is possible when setting these things up for the user to have an icon on their desktop which when clicked seamlessly makes the RDP connection, logs the user in to the remoter server and starts the Alpha application seamlessly. As Ray points out there is no benefit in shadowing the app as it is being run directly on the server.
                        Bob Whitaker

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Virtual Server

                          Bob,

                          Thank you for your information

                          Would there be a speed penalty if using shadowed with runtime? It does not seem there should be if the data is all that is moved back and forth, but?

                          The reason, I ask is specifically for the printing, rtf and email. My humble thought is that with runtime one would use what was on the desktop rather than the server.
                          If there is a penalty in speed, it would have to be weighed, of course.
                          Dave Mason
                          [email protected]
                          Skype is dave.mason46

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Virtual Server

                            Dave
                            Maybe you haven't got the principle. Try follow this
                            In the scenario the Terminal (with its own desktop memory) are actually run BY THE SERVER CPUs and RAM, directly reading from its hard drive. There is NO data moving back and forth. What would you be mirroring, the terminals' drive is the server drive. You want to mirror on the same drive its already on? That means unnecessary duplication of data and reading the same data multiple times and writing back updated data that the terminal changes should already be on the same drive.

                            Try open a Runtime multiple times on a single PC where the data files reside, where would they be shadowing?. All have the same location
                            Last edited by Ray in Capetown; 12-08-2014, 06:50 AM.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Virtual Server

                              Bob, if you're running Terminal Server aren't the licensing fees pretty stiff?

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X