Axel GrinerMarc Versley

One of five regional water management districts in thestate of Florida

Four broad areas of responsibility:• Water supply• Flood protection• Water quality• Natural systems management

300+ Desktops at Headquarters and three Service Offices• Multiple versions of OS, GIS software, service packs,

and patches• New workstations for GIS users every 2 years• Labor intensive for Desktop support staff and GIS staff.

2-3 hours per machine for a new install• Delayed response time for incidents for Desktop support staff to

service offices

Multiple data servers• Replicated vector and image data in each service office• Update process automated for some of the more “dynamic”

layers but a manual process for most of the data.

Licensing• ESRI license server in Brooksville• Limited ability to monitor and control license usage

• Provide ArcGIS Desktop published through Citrix to replace local installs

• Publish latest version of ArcGIS Desktop efficiently to the majority of users and keep software versions in sync

• Consolidate data to Brooksville HQ and eliminate need for replicated data on remote file servers

• Emphasize user training including training sessions at each Service Office

• Citrix Training for system administrators

• Bring up a Citrix Farm to test Citrix – MetaFrame XP

• Publish ArcGIS Desktop to limited users

• Printer testing

Travel to each Service Office to test and benchmark results• Slower but acceptable speeds were noted

Rollout• Give users ArcView 9.1 through Citrix• Assist users with data migration to centralized file server• Remove local installs of ArcView 8.3• Turn off remote file servers

User data management

• Provide dedicated file server to centralize user file storage –Q: drive. Quotas enabled and backed-up regularly

• Provide common area for all users for working with large files and for large geo processing tasks – P:\WorkdiskNot backed-up and erased every Friday

User assistance and training

• Assistance with moving data and map documents to Q: drive• Training

• On-site and session shadowing one-on-one• Section and departmental staff meetings• Demos broadcast from Brooksville

• Centrally Located• 1 Gb Backbone• All servers on the same subnet• Internal and External Web Interfaces• Program Neighborhood Agent• Roaming Profile• User file servers

Citrix could meet our requirementsUsers could have essentially the same experience with Citrix applications

Ease of upgradingSoftware upgrades, service packs, patches, and customized and 3rd party toolbars

Reduced Desktop SupportHundreds of man-hours saved by not having to maintain ArcViewin the service offices

Savings on GIS user workstationsStandard PCs suitable for running office applications are sufficient and can be upgraded every 3 to 5 years

Session Shadowing proved to be very useful for

• Trouble-shooting and resolving incidents for IT and GIS Help Desks

• Assisting and training users by being able to remotely demonstrate

MobilityUsers able to use their ArcView from any of the offices and from home and other remote sitesMore recently, users have been able to use ArcView on their laptops through wireless connections in the field

Sharing DataUsers able to more easily share data and map documents with other users in same office and other officesProvide Citrix ArcView to vendors and contractors to more efficiently manage projects

Consolidated user files to one serverScheduled backups for user files

• Roaming Profiles are good and bad

• Preferred over customized ArcIMS viewers

• Don’t use data from desktop

• Training is important for Users and Help Desk

• ArcGIS Upgrades

• Provisioning server

• 64-bit implementation

• Secondary Citrix farm in Tampa Service office

marc.versley@swfwmd.state.fl.us

axel.griner@swfwmd.state.fl.us