michaelcolson.com » terminal services

Office Suite Scalability on Terminal Services

michael — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:22:06 +0000

A colleague of mine recently pointed me to this great article on the scalability of office productivity suites on terminal services. The tests reviewed OpenOffice 2.1, Microsoft Office 2003, and Microsoft Office 2007.

The testers also put the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows to the test to see if there was any difference. You can view the study in its entirety or you can just skip ahead to the results.

The bottom line of the tests show that you will get the highest number of active sessions with Microsoft Office 2003. Suprisingly Microsoft Office 2007 isn’t all that far behind. I ususally hear rumblings of how Microsoft Office 2007 is a memory hog but this test seems to debunk that myth.

Introducing TS Server Drain Mode

michael — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:10:47 +0000

Terminal Services Server Drain Mode allows an administrator to prevent new logins to a terminal server. It does allow current users to stay connected and even allows disconnected sessions to re-connect and continue working. The Drain Mode feature also works with the new Terminal Services Session Broker Load Balancing.

If this kind of functionality sounds familiar it may be because Citrix has been doing this since the pre-MetaFrameXP days… Great job Microsoft on only being 7-8 years behind!

This post was on the Microsoft Terminal Services Team Blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ts/archive/2007/06/15/introducing-terminal-services-server-drain-mode.aspx

Specify Terminal Server License Server

michael — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 13:58:55 +0000

It is possible to specify a preferred TS License Server with Group Policy for Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1. Here is the procedure for setting the preferred TS License Server for 2000/2003 without using group policy:

Windows 2000:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/239107
To select a specific license server, locate the following key in the registry:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CCSServices\TermService\Parameters
Add the following value:
Name: DefaultLicenseServer
Data type: REG_SZ
Data value: ServerName
Substitute the NetBIOS name of the appropriate license server for ServerName. If the license server is located on a remote subnet, make sure the Terminal Services-based computer can resolve the NetBIOS name.

Windows Server 2003:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/279561
To select a specific license server, follow these steps, and then quit Registry Editor.

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CCS\Services\TermService\Parameters
On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Key.
Name the new key “LicenseServers”
Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CCS\Services\TermService\Parameters\LicenseServers
For each licensing server to which you would like to point the Terminal Services server, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
Name the new key “ServerName” where ServerName is the NetBIOS name of the license server that you want to use, and then press ENTER.
Note The new key name can be any of the following designations that represent the license server:
- The NetBIOS name of the server
- The fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the server
- The IP Address of the server
Restart your computer.