Remote Desktop licensing can be an issue in Azure or Amazon. They don't provide a simple cost/user/month system. You may have to purchase your own Remote Desktop licenses, or TSPlus (which can be a licensing gray area). There are also ISPs like Infinitely Virtual that specialize in Remote Desktop hosting with easy licensing.

http://www.infinitelyvirtual.com/categories/office-virtualization/virtual-terminal-server-standard.html

>Hi Everyone,
>
>been away for a long while - very good and interesting to be back.
>
>So, we have a VFP6 system comprising three different executables with one VFP DB - and I need to look at "moving this into the cloud" for a specific customer. In the past, their setup has been to run the app on a Windows Server 2008 machine with 10-16 users attached at any one time - some via remote desktop, others on the LAN. The application is only used for about 3 months of the year and so this server is setup annually by another contractor who also sets up all the clients etc. Now, the client wants to eliminate the need for setting up and maintaining a Windows Server and LAN in their office and want that part to be "hosted remotely". As I have no real experience in doing this, I'm asking the UT/VFP community for some help in finding the best way to do this. I've been researching Azure but it's kinda painful to find answers to specific questions. I'm open to any solution that meets the needs while still being economical. Also, given the nature of the change, we can now take the opportunity to upgrade the application to VFP9 - something the client hasn't wanted to pay for in the past because "it works great now and we aren't convinced that upgrading to a new version of this FoxPro thingy might not have unintended consequences"... you know the drill.
>
>Some key points about the system:
>
>a) All primary application data is in a single, local VFP database comprising about 80 tables. Largest table is about 50K records and total disk space is on the order of about 250MB.
>
>b) there are THREE key VFP6 Windows executables (app was never upgraded to VFP9 - ain't broke? why fix?); two of these run ONLY on the server and one runs on all client workstations/desktops for system management, data entry and "order processing".
>
>c) the client workstation application is NOT client/server (old, old legacy code)
>
>d) one server application communicates to a remote web server via WestWind over HTTPS to query status of a remote task.
>
>e) both server applications connect to a remote MySQL database over ODBC using the Oracle MySQL 5.2 32-bit ODBC driver. These ODBC connections are currently locked down on the remote side to specific IP addresses. In other words - for security - the MySQL server on the remote server will only accept connections from specific IP's and this is configured on the remote server's firewall by limiting connections on port 3306 - the ODBC port.
>
>f) while the desktop clients only connect to the application for about 12 hours a day, the two server applications need to run continuously (with only minor downtime for maintenance etc.). To ensure the server apps are up, they are remotely monitored via semaphores and a remote connection will be made to "restart" manually should it crash (i.e. semaphore fails to be sent/acknowledged within some time limit).
>
>g) the two server applications do not put a significant strain on the server; they're quite lightweight and only really "do stuff" every minute for a few seconds on average. The client application is even lighter than that.
>h) the key consideration is that the client does NOT want to setup and maintain a Windows Server in their office nor do they want to have the client workstations "on a LAN" - except in the sense that they're connected to their Internet connection; i.e. they want the clients to connect to the server application via terminal session.
>
>So here are some questions; please answer any that you might have an answer to and TIA!
>
>1) Is Azure even capable of handling this situation? My chief concerns are the fact that the client application is NOT client/server for VFP, use of ODBC drivers, and the static IP issue.
>
>2) If Azure can do this, does anyone have any thoughts on what (very approximately) it would cost or how to *determine* in advance what it might cost?
>
>3) Can Azure provide a static real-world IP address and can that persist through reboots and such?
>
>4) Is there something else out there we should be looking at to do this? I suppose it might be feasible to look for someone to host a Windows Server instance and just use remote desktop and remote server console access... does anyone have any experience with that? I would be a little concerned that someone unknown has access to this client's data as some of it sensitive...
>
>Once again thanks guys; I'll be spending more time on here now and will start again to answer questions and not just ask!
>
>-Arne