Mac remote web access to Windows SBS 2011

Thank you. Any other slick solutions? Something besides LogMeIn or Teamviewer?

Its possible that Crossovers for Mac might work:  https://www.codeweavers.com/windows-on-mac?gclid=CMvX86-Ww8ECFZSFfgodEzsABQ

I used to use it from remote access to a Win 2003 server, but one of the upgrades to the Win Server broke it. This was several years ago and it may be the upgrades to Crossovers will allow it to work again. I think there is a free trial.

The other much more expensive solution is to install Windows on the Mac, either in a separate partition using the free BootCamp, or virtualized using Parallels or VMWare Fusion.

Let us know if Crossovers works.

Thank you. I'm not sure we want to deploy something that may get broken down the road, but if we do, I'll report back.

I've never used crossover, but if you're going to use it, you might as try wine first, installed via MacPorts or HomeBrew for free.  Wine can run IE8, for the most part, but it currently fails for IE9 and above.  They haven't figured out all the hooks and dlls that need to be copied over.  https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=25

LogMeIn and Teamviewer go off to remote servers to connect back, and they're slower than a Remote Desktop connection to a server or even a VM on a server.  If you have a VM server somewhere, it's probably easiest to let your Mac user use Remote Desktop to an instance.

If you don't, then you can run Parallels and have Windows program Icons appear in the Dock.  In Parallels' Coherence Mode, you can run Windows programs as if they're part of OSX.  The Parallels Windows VM is still running in the background.  As with any VM, you'll need to alllocate RAM resources for the full VM.

Parallels and VMWare Fusion cost money, but are almost twice as fast as the Virtualbox.  VirtualBox is just slow, but it will work.

Hi,

Sorry for the late response.

I'd be up for trying the suggestions above, but the user switched over to the Mac (right or wrong), under Apple's flag of "making things easier".

But thank you.

Well, OSX is a really designed as single user OS.  For that purpose, it really is easy for a non-tech to use.  Making it work under Microsoft in a corporate environment has been a major afterthought, at least it seems that way.  They're only just making inroads and starting to figure out that corporations want AD and control over the systems.

Can't the Mac user just use Microsoft Remote Desktop from the app store?  You can open a port on your firewall and forward port 3389 to some other port to reduce you attack footprint.  Then your mac users won't have to use a browser to do remote desktop.

Hi,

This is an app that's installed on the Mac that allows us to remotely login and control one of our PC's? If that's the case, it might be what I'm looking for.

When I do a search at the Apple Store, I see "Apple Remote Desktop", but not "Microsoft Remote Desktop".

Apple Remote Desktop is for logging into Macs.

You can get Microsoft Remote Desktop for Macs here:  http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=18140  which can be used to set up an RDP connection to a single PC or Windows server, but not to RWW.

Also, CoRD will do the same thing:  http://cord.sourceforge.net

Strange, I see it in my App store searches, but strung provided the Microsoft link.  I'm a bit surprised that Apple allows that.

It appears under the Business section while Apple Remote Desktop is in the Utilities section.

If you need to connect to Sever 2012, Microsoft Remote Desktop is a sure thing.  There are some RDP setting that prevent CoRD from authenticating/connecting.  I normally use CoRD.