Server 2008 Terminal Services Part 4: New Terminal Server Manager
If you’ve played with Server 2008 at all, you’ve likely noticed its new Server Manager. Although a little complicated to get used to at the outset, where Server Manager shines is in its centralization of much of the installation and initial configuration of Server 2008 services.
Server Manager is brought up upon the initial logon by an administrator or by right-clicking Computer and choosing Manage. If you’re used to the old Computer Manager screen we’ve seen since the Windows of old, this one will strike you in how different it really is. To enable Terminal Services, you need to first right-click the top Server Manager node and select Add Role.
Server 2008 does a much better job than...
...previous O/S’s in terms of componentizing the various Windows services you would normally install onto a server. If you don’t enable the service, the bits aren’t there. This helps reduce the attack surface of the server and ultimately increases its security profile.
Services are now broken down into Roles, Features, and Role Services, with Roles generally being made up of the “larger” functions and Features usually being the “smaller” functions. Often, a Role requires a Feature as a dependency before it can be installed. Each Role also has a number of Role Services that can augment that role. For our example, we see the following:
- Role: Terminal Services
- Role Services: Terminal Services, TS Licensing, TS Session Broker, TS Gateway, and TS Web Access
- Features: TS RemoteApp Manager
In order to enable a minimal installation of Terminal Services, you’ll need to enable the Terminal Services role and Role Service as well as the TS Licensing Role Service. If you want to utilize TS RemoteApp, you’ll need to enable that within Features.
It all sounds complicated, but the engine does a relatively good job of telling you which components must be installed for the Role to function as you want.
Once the initial installation is complete, Server Manager will now contain our old friends Terminal Services Manager and Terminal Services Configuration as well as the new menu item TS RemoteApp Manager. Unlike with previous O/S’s where we had to go to multiple places to manage our Terminal Server configuration, nearly all of it is done now within this single interface alongside every other Role’s configuration.
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