New Terminal Services (RDS) CAL question

[bg.graf]

In reading around I understand the differences in the licensing between User and Device CALs. However, I have not found anything that relates to my specific question.

A Doctor's office that i support is going to Electronic Medical Records. They want to place the Application on a Terminal Server and use App-V to allow each PC to run the software remotely. My question is, the entire staff just uses an account called "staff" on all of the PC's. is that a problem with RDS Cals? Does that mean I only need 1 CAL if every machine is logged in as "Staff"?

In this situation are User CALs going to be more efficient and cost effective or would Device CALs be easier to manage?

Thanks in advance.

 

[OfficeTechs]

It usually comes down to which is the lesser amount, devices or users.

If you have 3 computers and 6 people potentially wanting to logon, then license by device and vice versa.

Having 1 user account to logon to the terminal server and for everyone to use it im not sure is even possible as when the next person logs on they will take over the session, although i think it is possible to get it to start a new session.

Legally its called a user CAL which means an actual user not specifically a user account. From memory they are not that expensive.

 

[pcman2010]

Before you go through all this ensure that the server medical software doesn't have a client application that could be used on the client desktops without going through the expense of setting up a terminal server.

 

[krtechsolutions]

More then most likely per devices is usually the way to go, unless a doctor has 3 device such as desktop, laptop, and tablet

As mentioned above make sure the application can run on a TS

 

[bg.graf]

Before you go through all this ensure that the server medical software doesn't have a client application that could be used on the client desktops without going through the expense of setting up a terminal server.

Yeah I've worked with the Engineers for the company and they gave us the option to run it on desktops or virtually..

The desktops in the Dr's Office are old enough that they would need to be replaced (roughly 8 machines) to run the new application. We already were building a server (Dell T610) for the Sql Server and and Application server will be virtualized and since I purchased Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, It came with 4 virtual WS08R2 Product keys. so in all reality we will be spending $80 roughly per RDS CAL instead of several hundred per pc for 8 new pc's.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I usually do "User CALs".
If I were to do the same user for all those logins....I'd still purchase enough CALs to cover all the different people logging in...even though they are all using the same username.

FYI...some audits of healthcare networks don't look too kindly as same login used across the board.