Network Infrastructure Planning, Terminal Services - Research Paper Example

? Terminal Services TERMINAL SERVICES Remote desktop applications previously called terminal services is a component of windows thatallows user to access data and applications on a remote computer over a network while using the remote desktop server (RDP). Terminal services are a way Microsoft implements thin client terminal server computing where windows applications are made accessible to a remote client machine. The client can be any computer running any operating system as long as terminal services are made available to the remote client machine. With these services, only the user interface of some application is presented on the client machine. All input from client machine is purposely redirected to the application server where all the processing happens. Terminal services is a very well in place technology to provide services to remote offices since organizations are finding ways to reduce the cost of ownership by centrally deploying and managing windows based applications and remotely administering window server 2003- based computers. The services allow centrally deployment and management of windows based applications. This has the advantage that a company can ensure that all the computers are running the current version of application software since the software is installed once on the server instead of installing on each and every machine. This has the advantage of reducing the cost of installation and maintenance of such applications since it’s done once on a machine. Also such services reduce application support since its being done from one central server. This ensures a cost effective way of installation and maintenance of services within the different four remote offices. The issue of mirroring all application to the headquarters is reduced since the headquarters have all the information about the application used remotely by the offices. Since installation services are done mainly from the headquarters, then the cost incurred due to licensing and other costs of installation are just incurred once from the headquarters. This saves a lot of operation costs due to the reduced licensing costs. Costs like disk space usage are greatly reduced since this is mainly incurred from the server which runs all the applications. The issue of security when accessing sensitive files is up to standard since all security matters about who accesses what is controlled from the headquarters. The following are ideal situations where terminal services are mainly applied:- Hosting Line-of-Business Applications If an organization or some groups within the organization normally uses some specialized software to do their specialized work, it is always a good idea to host their applications using a terminal server. This is an ideal area to apply Terminal server. Terminal server can be used in the following situations: Custom applications. If business application is developed internally, what is commonly referred to as in-house or specifically for your organization, and specifically tends to require updating frequently, deployment of the application once on a terminal server can greatly reduce the costs. This is especially important if your environment is actually dispersed or when you are deploying terminal server to centrally serve different offices. Large central data pool. Applications that tend to rely on access to a central data source often run well on a terminal server because huge amounts of data do not necessarily travel across users for access. Instead the whole data processing is done on the server. Only the keystrokes and some display information have to travel across the specified network, which allows one to use lower bandwidth connections. This is especially important if users of that data pool are remotely located, for example in an office branch with a sluggish connection to database server. Task workers. In setups where security is an issue and you want workers to mainly access only applications they have rights to access in order to perform their jobs, centralization of the administration to these users can be done using a terminal server. IT Admin tools. System administrators can easily perform tasks requiring Enterprise Administrator permissions on a server that has the necessary tools installed on the server. Deployment and Configuration of Terminal Services This is basically an installation that will allow users to connect to a terminal server, use network resources and run programs on the terminal server. Terminal server role service is installed and configured in order to be able to host programs. Basically, the following three steps are used to install the terminal server: 1. Use service manager which installs the terminal server role service 2. Then install programs on the server. 3. Then configure remote settings, which involves adding users and groups which connects to the remote server. It’s important mainly to remember that the role service would be installed on the terminal server after all the programs that are to run on the server have been installed to reduce them not working properly after later installation. Installation and configuration of all the above in a terminal server will be done while putting all the above factors into consideration. Security which determines who accesses what in this setup would be an important issue to consider during this configuration, since the installations allows users to connect to the host computer from different locations. The introduction of such connections opens some obvious security questions. These issues will be remedied by making the remote desktop application as secure as possible. The first option would be to limit the users who can be able to log on the host computer. However it is kind of impossible to have a hundred percent secure system. Due to this fact, investments would be made on more powerful firewalls or remote desktop application tailored to offering security to the whole setup. Research would be done on the applications running in the system and compared to the security offered to ensure that the whole system’s security is up to level. Applications made mainly for end final users of your system must be installed well on an RD Session server so that it will be possible to access them remotely. Before you do your installation on an RD server, compatibility issues should be well known since the application would be running on a remote desktop service.  Make sure that you the RD session is installed on the Host role service on the server before install any other applications that users might need to run in their remote sessions or as programs. The Host role service of the RD Session would be installed after all the applications to prevent mull-functioning in a multi user environment.  In order to install an end-user application on an RD Session Host server, the RD Session Host server will first be switched on to a special install mode commonly known as the RD-Install so that running of the application in a multi user environment is made possible. After applications have been installed, the server will be switched back to execution mode (RD-Execute) before users can be able to remotely connect to the server. The command below would be used to perform those instructions change user /install change user /execute in order to determine the current install mode of the RD Session Host server, the command below would be used: change user /query Best Practices The best practices to be involved in while doing all this installations come about when some problems arise. This is some of the problems that might arise during installation and deployment of terminal services. When the application has got compatibility issues which might affect other programs. When the number of application users exceeds server capacity. The applications are resource that is (CPU, memory, and so forth) intensive and affect performance negatively when many instances are at the same time running. Configuration of intranet and web applications would be basically be done on the terminal server. Web applications are designed in such a way that they can be distributed and used remotely by many computers so long as they are running on a live server. Before configuring intranet for the remote sites, web server, networked pcs, firewall hardware and software, content management software and some application software would be required. The web server will have the hardware and software. The hardware to be used would contain up to standard requirements so that it is able to get the job done and also minimize on the costs of setting it up. The machine would be very powerful to not to slow connections or alternatively distributed computing where a cluster of servers are used would be put into use. The server software would handle all requests for the files hosted on the server. its job is to find the specified file requested in the command and then send it back to the requesting computer. The apache web server would be used in this case. The advantage of using apache web server is because it is free for download and installation and performs relatively fast like other commercial web servers out there in the market. For employees to be able to connect to this intranet, then they need to be connected to the office LAN and be running web browser software such as Firefox or google chrome. The following is basically the architecture of the terminal services setup. Image courtesy of Microsoft (http://technet.microsoft.com) Bibliography Madden, B. S. (2004). Terminal Services for Microsoft Windows Server 2003: Advanced Technical Design Guide. The Brian Madden Company, LLC. Microsoft . (2006, November 6). Applications may not run correctly in a Terminal Services environment. Retrieved from Microsoft Website: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840342 Mirosoft Corporation. (2003, March 28). What Is Terminal Services? Retrieved from Microsoft Website: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc782486(v=ws.10).aspx Read More