I got to do some Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services work over the last few days. In particular, I was focusing on:
- RemoteApp: Applications can now be published like in Citrix’s old solution. A shortcut pointing to a TS application is shared.
- TS Web: A web interface for logging into TS. You can publish your RemoteApp shortcuts or even a desktop to the web interface.
- TS Gateway: This provides a secure way of sharing RemoteApp applications to the Internet, e.g. a RemoteApp shortcut can be shared on the Internet via TS Web. The RDP session is encapsulated in HTTPS/SSL thus making it Internet and firewall friendly.
- EasyPrint: The biggest failing of TS over the Internet was printing. You just couldn’t print over the Internet or a Corporate WAN, e.g. a 2MB PDF can generate a 20MB stream of data that is sent to a printing device. This is only available to Vista SP1 and XP SP3 clients.
The user experience is simple. They sign onto the site and then either log into a desktop or an application that you’ve published. Simple as that.
You then do your traditional TS stuff for the user experience and server lockdown, i.e. file permissions and loop back GPO processing.
I tried it out on my 3MB DSL from home connecting to a W2008 TS in our data centre at work. The user experience was excellent. I printed a doc to my photo printer with no driver messing (thank you Easy Print!) and my DSL wasn’t clogged for hours 🙂 Overall, two thumbs up!