Published: February 25, 2008

This guide has summarized the critical decisions, activities, and tasks required to enable a successful design of a Terminal Services infrastructure based on Windows Server 2008.

The guide has addressed the fundamental decisions and tasks involved in:

• Deciding what applications are to be delivered by Terminal Services and whether Terminal Services is the right approach to use.
• Determining the resources needed to employ Terminal Services to serve the selected applications.
• Designing the components, layout, security, and connectivity of the Terminal Services infrastructure.

This was done by leading the reader through the ten steps in the decision flow to arrive at a successful design. Where appropriate, the decisions and tasks have been illustrated with typical usage scenarios.

The guide has discussed the technical aspects, service characteristics, and business requirements needed to complete a comprehensive review of the decision-making process.

As stated in the introduction, it is very important at the start of a Terminal Services project to have a full understanding of the business objectives for the project:

• What benefits does the business expect to achieve through the use of presentation virtualization?
• What is the value of those benefits, and therefore the cost case for using Terminal Services to deliver those benefits?

The business objectives should be prioritized right at the start of the project so that they are clearly understood and agreed upon between IT and the business. This is because some applications will likely not be immediately suited to delivery by Terminal Services and will therefore require some changes in order to remain within the scope of the project. Those changes incur cost and, before embarking upon them, this must be fed back to the business so that those additional costs can be understood and the best business decision arrived at.

Once an architecture has been drafted, limited “pilot” tests should be conducted before a major rollout begins so that lessons learned can be incorporated back into the design.

This guide, when used in conjunction with product documentation, allows organizations to confidently plan the implementation of Terminal Services technologies in Windows Server 2008.

Additional Reading

Terminal Services Team Blog, https://blogs.msdn.com/ts/.

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