Server 2008 Terminal Services Part 6: RemoteApp
What does Citrix have that Terminal Server admins have always lusted after…at least until now? The ability to launch published applications in addition to published desktops, that’s what! For years one of the biggest draws to the Citrix platform has been its ability to securely publish not only Windows desktops, but seamless Windows applications as well. Now with Server 2008, we get that functionality in-the-box and for no extra charge.
TS RemoteApp adds the ability to publish a specific application to your users. Combined with the TS Web Access functionality that we’ll talk about tomorrow, you’ll see that this new functionality is the killer feature. If anything, in my opinion, this alone will drive your upgrade to Server 2008 faster than any other.
What is TS RemoteApp...
Add the Terminal Server role to your Server 2008 system, then the TS RemoteApp Manager Feature. You’ll see a new configuration window in Server Manager that gives you the ability to identify the initial executable for common applications and create RemoteApps out of them. From this configuration screen, you can publish those applications to a web page using TS Web Access. This means your users need only go to their Web Access web page to get all their applications and they’ll appear like they’re running locally. The result looks more-or-less exactly like Citrix’s implementation of Seamless Windows. If you want to secure those apps when publishing them to the Internet, you can configure TS Gateway settings as well.
Right-click on the TS RemoteApp Manager and choose Add RemoteApps to create a new published application. All installed applications on your system that can be enumerated via WMI will be displayed for you to select. If your application isn’t listed, you can click the Browse button to select an application or customize an existing one with execution switches. Click Finish to complete.
Once the application is created, there are four ways to deploy that application to users. First, as discussed above, you can publish that app through TS Web Access. You can also create and deploy an .RDP file or install it via an .MSI file. Lastly, you can associate a file name extension with a RemoteApp. Interestingly enough, the GUI for the RDC currently doesn’t support connecting to a RemoteApp. But, using a combination of the mechanisms above, you can behind-the-scenes deploy applications to your users and centralize your application support back on your Terminal Servers.
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