Configuring Servers for Terminal Services Deployment

It is recommended that the server computers you purchase for Terminal Services are purchased from the same vendor and that you configure them in the same way. This will facilitate administering Terminal Services. If you are deploying Terminal Services to serve different needs, consider dividing the servers into groups based upon function and making the servers in each group as similar as possible.

If your organization uses equipment standards, adhere to these standards when planning new hardware acquisitions to accommodate Terminal Services. If necessary, scale up from the existing standard to keep hardware and software administration and maintenance as simple as possible.

When planning server deployment consider memory, page and dump files, CPUs, and the registry. A dump file is for memory dump in case of failure. Considerations for each of these is as follows:

Memory

A good principle is 128 MB of RAM for the base operating system services, plus and additional amount per user. This additional amount varies and should be between 16 MB and 20 MB per session. To compute this additional amount, plan on approximately 13 MB for the user's desktop, then add the amount needed to run applications. Note that when more than one user runs a particular application, the code for the application is not duplicated in memory (executable code is shared across instances of an application). Applications that are 16-bit require about 25 percent more memory than 32-bit applications.

If users will be running memory-intensive applications, such as a client/server application with a large memory footprint, you need to increase the amount of RAM allocated for each user. Each server needs to have enough physical memory to ensure that the page file is almost never used.

Page and Dump Files

The amount of disk space devoted to each server page file must be at least one and one-half times the total amount of physical RAM.

It is a good idea to put the Terminal server operating system on one physical drive and assign the page file to another. If the server has a large amount of physical memory, you need to consider whether the hard disk drive space is sufficient to record the dump file on the system partition Consider such factors as total memory, page file size, installed applications, and the total size of the hard disk drive. For better performance, the page file must be on a separate physical disk. Consider disabling the dump file on systems with large amounts of RAM (typically 128 MB or more), unless drive C is large enough to hold the dump file.

CPUs

Terminal server needs to meet Windows 2000 Server requirements. The amount of processing required per user is dependent on the types of applications being run. This is best determined through trial deployments. For more information about scaling, see the Terminal Services Scaling link on the Web Resources page at https://windows.microsoft.com/windows2000/reskit/webresources .

Registry

The registry size is dynamically set during installation and is based on the page file size. The registry quota is based on memory size. Registry size can also be set from Control Panel. Double-click System , then click the Advanced tab. On the Advanced tab click Performance Options and then Change . Enter the registry size.