Examine methods for bringing thin-client technology to users' desktops
In March 1998, the Windows NT Magazine Lab reviewed Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition, beta 1; Citrix Systems' MetaFrame, beta 1 (then named pICAsso after Citrix's Independent Computing Architecture—ICA—protocol); and Maxspeed's MaxStations (see John Enck, "Spawn of the Hydra," March 1998). Terminal Server and MetaFrame (a Terminal Server add-on) shipped in 1998, and since the article, many companies have implemented one or both products to create a multiuser NT environment. Thus, the Lab is ready to revisit the thin-client review.
Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition
The most obvious difference between Terminal Server and MetaFrame is the products' display protocols. A display protocol is a data-link layer protocol that transfers a client's input to a server for interpretation and transfers the server application's output to the client for display. Not all display protocols are equal. If you've read anything about multiuser NT during the past year, you know that ICA currently has capabilities that the original version of Terminal Server's RDP doesn't have. RDP doesn't support playing audio files, copying between local and remote applications, printing from local printers, or running protocols other than TCP/IP. ICA supports all these types of functionality. Terminal Server's Service Pack 4 (SP4) and Windows 2000 (Win2K) will add some of these features to RDP. (For more information about these upgrades and about how RDP and ICA differ, see "Terminal Server Grows Up," page 103.) At press time, RDP lacks some of ICA's functionality, but RDP is adequate for Win32 clients that don't need sound.
Installation and Configuration
Installing Terminal Server is similar to installing the standard NT Server 4.0 OS. The Terminal Server CD-ROM includes an option for upgrading an existing NT Server installation to Terminal Server. The Terminal Server version of SP3 installs with the OS. However, although Microsoft released NT 4.0 SP4 in December 1998, SP4 for Terminal Server (which has a different kernel from standard NT 4.0) isn't available at press time. Microsoft said Terminal Server's SP4 would be available in first quarter 1999. By default, Terminal Server installs as a member server, not a domain controller. This default option is beneficial because it helps ensure that user authentications don't overburden your Terminal Server system, which must serve client terminal requests. If you can install NT, installing Terminal Server is a cinch.
After I installed Terminal Server, I was ready to play with the OS. I rolled out Terminal Server's Client Creator tool and prepared to install the Terminal Server client on my network's workstations. You can create a client installation disk on your Terminal Server system, then install the Terminal Server client on user workstations from the installation disk. Or you can place the installation software on a shared drive. Terminal Server's client software resides in Terminal Server systems' \%system-root%\system32\clients\ tsclient\win32\disks\disk1 directory. Make this directory a shared directory, and users with appropriate permission sets (including members of the domain Users group) can connect to the share and run the Terminal Server client's Setup program.
After you distribute the files to your Terminal Server clients, setting up the client software to find the Terminal Server system is simple. (Wonder of wonders, you don't have to reboot workstations after installing the Terminal Server client.) The only part of client configuration that is confusing is a licensing screen that warns you that you must have an NT Workstation license to run the Terminal Server client. Microsoft created this window before it changed Terminal Server's licensing rules. On February 1, Microsoft began offering three kinds of Terminal Server client licenses: a Terminal Server Client Access License (CAL) for office connections to a Terminal Server system, an Internet Connector (IC) license for anonymous Internet connections to a Terminal Server system, and a work-at-home license for users with a valid Terminal Server CAL to connect to a Terminal Server system via RAS.
The simplest way to start a Terminal Server session is to open the client software and choose the server you want to connect to, as Screen 1, page 152, shows. If you don't see your server in the client's list of available Terminal Server systems, you can type the server's IP address or name in the Server drop-down list to connect to it.
You can also start a Terminal Server session by creating a custom connection in Client Connection Manager on a Terminal Server client. This option gives you more control over your session's settings, and it creates a connection entry in the Terminal Server client program group and Client Connection Manager that you can reuse. You can even create two Client Connection Manager entries to one server if you want to use different connection settings for different Terminal Server sessions on the same server. You can configure automatic user logons in Client Connection Manager, or you can let users log on each time they connect to a Terminal Server system. Users must log on to every Terminal Server session they open, regardless of whether they are already logged on to their NT domain or workgroup.