Terminal Services Manager Overview

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Terminal Services Manager overview

Use Terminal Services Manager to view information about terminal servers that reside in trusted domains. Use this tool to monitor users, sessions, and applications on each terminal server, and to carry out assorted actions to manage the server. See individual procedures in Terminal Services Manager How To... for the permission levels required to perform each task.

When a user creates a session by connecting to a terminal server from a client computer, the session appears in the Session list in Terminal Services Manager. In addition, the name of the user who logs on by using the session appears in the Users list. Any applications run in the user's session can be monitored on the Processes list. Therefore, you can oversee all users, sessions, and processes on a terminal server from one location.

Terminal Services Manager also allows you to manage a terminal server by using the commands on the Actions menu. For more information, see Using Terminal Services Manager.

Console session

In Terminal Services Manager, the system console session is identified as session 0 in the Session list when you connect to a terminal server. A console session is defined as the session you connect to at the physical console of the remote computer, as though you were logging on locally instead of remotely. You can send a message to the console session, but you cannot perform any of the other administrative actions on it.

Listener sessions

Listener sessions are different from regular sessions. These sessions listen for and accept new Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client connections, thereby creating new sessions for the client requests. If you have configured more than one connection in Terminal Services Configuration, several listener sessions are available.

You have the option to reset a listener session. However, this is not recommended, because doing so resets all sessions that use the same Terminal Services connection. Resetting a user's session without warning can result in loss of data at the client.

Idle sessions

To optimize the performance of a terminal server, idle sessions are initialized by the server before client connections are made. These sessions are available to clients for connection. Two idle sessions are created by default. User sessions can also be in idle state. For information on configuring session limits, see Configuring session limits.