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David Overton's Blog » How Virtual Server enables SBS 2003 and Terminal Services on the same box
How Virtual Server enables SBS 2003 and Terminal Services on the same box

Terminal Services (TS) was a feature people liked in SBS 2000, but the performance and security issues meant that many people broke their solutions by overuse of TS.

The answer with SBS 2003 was no TS – which solved both the support issue, but also the fact that you could not run Outlook on the same machine as one with Exchange, thus meaning users of TS on an SBS system could not do e-mail except by browser. There is a very simple whitepaper on how to do TS on SBS located at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sbs/2003/deploy/adstrmsr.mspx .

Now, using Virtual Server, which is a no charge add-on to Windows, you can have a single server with SBS and providing Terminal Services as you run a mini-machine inside your SBS box. The thing to be aware of is the need to buy the right OS licenses for the virtual machines, so while you can save money on the hardware, currently, you need to buy OS licenses.

Once this is all done, using the power of Virtual Server you can be away – either for Terminal Services or any other application that needs a 2nd box, but nowhere for the hardware to go.

All this is nicely documented at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8e1b8271-17a0-4f3a-a379-19ecf37d4229&DisplayLang=en

 

Enjoy

 

Ttfn

 

David

Posted Wed, Jun 14 2006 7:56 AM by David Overton
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Comments

Paulie wrote re: How Virtual Server enables SBS 2003 and Terminal Services on the same box
on Wed, Jun 14 2006 9:34 AM
I would be interested to hear how others get on with this if they have time to try it.

I really like virtualisation but  I have always felt that in order for TS to be well adopted it must be very responsive and for that reason have never run it inside a virtual machine.  Espcially given that clients of the TS server are going to be hitting the SBS server running on the same hardware with requests.

Certainly not doubting this configuration works, just would like to hear how anyone else gets on with it.  Might give it a go when I have a bit more time on my hands.

Paulie
iQubed wrote re: How Virtual Server enables SBS 2003 and Terminal Services on the same box
on Wed, Jun 14 2006 9:35 AM
What would be your recommendation for the server hardware spec to run this with decent performance?

Cheers

Vijay
David Overton wrote re: How Virtual Server enables SBS 2003 and Terminal Services on the same box
on Wed, Jun 14 2006 11:12 PM
Paulie,

IF you use the R2 version of Virtual Server then perf starts to go ok - the white paper talks about the fact that a 15 user system running on a 2-proc Xeon is acceptable using both TS and SBS.

This will only improve in the coming months.

ttfn

David
David Overton wrote re: How Virtual Server enables SBS 2003 and Terminal Services on the same box
on Thu, Jun 15 2006 12:04 AM
Oh, and some hardware specs are in the paper, but I would allow at least 1GB and 1 x fast processor (AMD or Xeon with x64 extensions for future proofing) for the Virtual environment.  This leave 1 CPU and what ever memory you would normally put in for the customer.

ttfn

David

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