Windows Server 2008 : Configuring Terminal Services (part 3)

Security Tab

This tab enables you to set user permissions for all RDP connections to the terminal server. It is recommended that you do not use this tab to configure user access to Terminal Services; for that, use the Remote Desktop Users group instead. You should use this tab to determine which users should have administrative control (Full Control) of Terminal Services.

The Security tab is shown in Figure 10.

Configuring Terminal Services Server Properties

Besides the RDP-Tcp Properties tabs, the TSC console offers a second important set of Terminal Services configuration options, available through the Edit Settings area. These settings apply to the entire terminal server only; unlike RDP-Tcp or other connection settings, they cannot be configured to apply merely to one transport protocol or to one particular network adapter.

The Edit Settings area provides a summary of seven terminal server options organized under three categories: General, Licensing, and TS Session Broker. To change these server options, double-click any one of them. This procedure opens a Properties dialog box whose three tabs are also named General, Licensing, and TS Session Broker.

The options available in these three tabs are explained in the following section.

General Tab

The General tab enables you to configure the following features related to user logon sessions:

• Delete Temporary Folders On Exit When this option is enabled, as it is by default, all temporary data is deleted when a user logs off from a Terminal Services session. Deleting temporary data in this way decreases performance but improves privacy because it prevents users from potentially accessing another user’s data.

  This setting functions only when the next option, Use Temporary Folders Per Session, is also enabled.

• Use Temporary Folders Per Session Enabled by default, this option ensures that a new folder to store temporary data is created for each user session. When this option is disabled, temporary data is shared among all active sessions. Sharing temporary data among users can improve performance at the expense of user privacy.

• Restrict Each User To a Single Session This option is enabled by default. When enabled, it allows only one logon session to the terminal server per user. For instance, if you are logged on to a server locally with the built-in Administrator account, you cannot log on to the same computer through a Remote Desktop connection by using the same Administrator account until you first log off the server locally.

  By ensuring that you log off one session before beginning another, this default setting prevents possible data loss in the user profile. It also prevents stranded user sessions and, therefore, conserves server resources.

• User Logon Mode The settings in the User Logon Mode area enable you to prevent new users from logging on to the terminal server, for instance, in advance of a maintenance shutdown. The Allow All Connections option is the default setting. To prevent users from connecting to the terminal server indefinitely, you can select the Allow Reconnections, But Prevent New Logons option. To prevent users from connecting to the server only until you reboot the server, you can select the Allow Reconnections, But Prevent New Logons Until The Server Is Restarted option. Note that none of these options forces a session termination. If you need to reboot a server, you might need to end these sessions manually.

The General tab is shown in Figure 11.

Licensing Tab

The Licensing tab, shown in Figure 12, enables you to configure two features related to terminal server licensing: the licensing mode and the license server discovery mode.

• Terminal Services licensing mode During the installation of the Terminal Services server role, you can specify the licensing mode of the terminal server or select the option to configure the licensing mode later. To set or reset the licensing mode after installation, select the Server Properties Licensing tab, and then choose the Per Device or Per User option in the Specify The Terminal Services Licensing Mode area.

• License server discovery mode The license server discovery mode is the method by which a terminal server contacts a license server to obtain TS CALs. By default, the discovery mode is set to Automatically Discover A License Server. In the automatic license server discovery process, a terminal server attempts to contact any license servers published in Active Directory services or installed on domain controllers in the local domain. As an alternative to the automatic discovery mode, you can specify the license server manually by selecting the Use The Specified License Servers option and by then typing a license server name or address in the associated text box.

TS Session Broker Settings Tab

The TS Session Broker Settings tab, shown in Figure 13, is used to configure settings for a member server in a TS Session Broker farm. TS Session Broker can be used to balance the session load among servers in a farm by directing new user sessions to the server in the farm with the fewest sessions. TS Session Broker is also used to ensure that users can reconnect automatically to disconnected sessions on the appropriate farm member server.

To configure a terminal server farm, the first step is to install the TS Session Broker role service on a server that you want to use to track user sessions for the entire farm. This server becomes the TS Session Broker server. Then, you need to add the terminal servers in the farm to the Session Directory Computers local group on the TS Session Broker server. Finally, you have to configure the terminal servers to join the farm by configuring the following desired options on this tab:

• Join A Farm In TS Session Broker Select this check box to add the local server to a farm and to make the remaining options available for configuration.

• TS Session Broker Server Name Or IP Address In this text box, type the name or IP address of the server on which you have installed the TS Session Broker role service.

• Farm Name In TS Session Broker In this text box, you must type the name of the farm that will be shared by all farm members. This name also represents the Domain Name System (DNS) name that clients will use to connect to the terminal server farm. (For this reason, in the appropriate DNS server, be sure to add multiple DNS records that correspond to this farm name and that specify the IP address of each farm member.)

• Participate In Session Broker Load-Balancing Select this check box to configure the local server to participate in the load balancing feature enabled by TS Session Broker.

• Relative Weight Of This Server In The Farm You can use this setting to give powerful servers a larger proportion of user sessions than less powerful servers. For example, if you assign a powerful server a weight of 200 and a less powerful server a weight of 100, the first server will receive twice the number of sessions as the second server.

• Use IP Address Redirection (Recommended) Session Broker can use two methods to redirect a client to a disconnected session: IP address redirection and routing token redirection. IP address redirection is enabled by default and is suitable in most scenarios. This redirection method works when the clients can connect to each terminal server in the farm directly. Clear this check box only if your terminal services clients cannot connect to all terminal servers in the farm and when your network load balancing solution supports TS Session Broker routing tokens.

• Select IP addresses to be used for reconnection Use this section to select the IP address that you want to enable for use in the terminal server farm.