Client Login
Terminal Services
Terminal Server is the server component of Terminal services. It handles the job of authenticating clients, as well as making the applications available remotely. It is also entrusted with the job of restricting the clients according to the level of access they have. The Terminal Server respects the configured software restriction policies, so as to restrict the availability of certain software to only a certain group of users. The remote session information is stored in a specialized directory, called Session Directory, which is stored at the server. Session directories are used to store state information about a session, and can be used to resume interrupted sessions. The terminal server also has to manage these directories. Terminal Servers can be used in a cluster as well.[1]
In Windows Server 2008, it has been significantly overhauled. While logging in, if the user logged on to the local system using a Windows Server Domain account, the credentials from the same sign-on can be used to authenticate the remote session. However, this requires Windows Server 2008 to be the terminal server OS, while the client OS is limited to either Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista. In addition, the terminal server can provide access to only a single program, rather than the entire desktop, by means of a feature named RemoteApp. Terminal Services Web Access (TS Web Access) makes a RemoteApp session invocable from the web browser. It includes the TS Web Access Web Part control which maintains the list of RemoteApps deployed on the server and keeps the list up to date. A Terminal server session can also be tunneled through a gateway via the TS Gateway service. It makes the server available over the Internet by tunneling the RDP data over a HTTPS channel. Both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Home Server can act as TS Gateway servers. Terminal Server can also integrate with Windows System Resource Manager to throttle resource usage of remote applications.[2]
Terminal Server is managed by the Terminal Server Manager MMC snap-in. It can be used to configure the sign in requirements, as well as to enforce a single instance of remote session. It can also be configured by using Group Policy or WMI. It is, however, not available in client versions of Windows OS, where the server is pre-configured to allow only one session and enforce the rights of the user account on the remote session, without any customization.[1]
1. "Technical Overview of Terminal Services in Windows Server 2003".
