Windows Terminal Server came as a separate product in the
days of NT 4. Now it comes as a service in Win 2k. The major difference between
the two is that while Terminal Server needed a separate server machine for its
installation, Terminal Services installs on your Win 2k server itself. It can
now be used in two modes—as an application server, or for remote
administration. In fact, Microsoft recommends that it be used for remote
administration of multiple Win 2k servers.
Installing Terminal Services is fairly simple. You can select
the service to be installed during the setup of the Win 2k server, or add it
later. In the latter case, open the Control Panel and go to Add/Remove Programs.
Bring up the Add/Remove Windows Components option. Check the Terminal Services
and Terminal Services Licensing check boxes. Click on Next and the wizard takes
over from there.
Terminal Services can be set up either as an application
server—which lets users use applications installed on the server, or for
remote administration. If clustering is installed on your server, you can’t
use Terminal Services as an application server.
You need an active directory user account to use Terminal
Services. All user account management is done in the Active Directory users
list, while the connections to all those accounts can be monitored through the
Terminal Services Manager.
For installing the client, use the Terminal Services Client
Creator in Win 2k Administrative Tools menu. This creates diskettes for either
16 or 32-bit clients. The 16-bit client is for Win 3.x machines and the 32-bit
is for Win 9x or other Win NT machines. After the client is installed on the
intended client machine, run it to connect to the appropriate Win 2k server.
When prompted, enter your username and password. For non-Windows based
platforms, like Linux, Unix, etc, third-party clients are available.
When you run the Terminal Services client, you can run
applications you want, without having them installed on your machine. This can
be useful if you have machines with slow processor, less hard disk space, or
insufficient RAM.
In the remote administration mode, you can use it to control
access rights for users, monitor the server, and do almost all administrative
tasks that can be done from the server itself.
Ashish Sharma
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