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Controlling the issuance of Terminal Server licenses

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

Controlling the issuance of Terminal Server licenses

By default, a Terminal Server license server issues a license to any computer that requests one. For security reasons, you might want to restrict the issuance of licenses to specific computers or groups. You can use the license server Security Group Group Policy setting to control which servers are eligible to receive licenses.

Terminal Services Computers, a local security group, is created by default the first time Terminal Server Licensing is started. When the target computer is a domain controller, this group is a domain local group. For more information about enabling this policy setting, see Control the issuance of Terminal Server licenses.

By default, the Terminal Services Computers security group is not populated. You must choose the computers or groups you want to receive licenses and manually add them to this group. Any changes you make to the membership of this group take effect only after you stop and restart the Terminal Server Licensing service. For more information about adding members to a security group, see Changing group memberships.

The most efficient way to manage Terminal Server computer accounts is to create a global group that contains the accounts of all terminal servers that must be licensed. Then, add this global group to the local (or domain local) Terminal Services Computers group. This method allows a domain administrator to manage a single list of computer accounts.

For more information about Terminal Server and Terminal Server Licensing, see Guidelines for Deploying Terminal Server (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=34627) and Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server Licensing (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=26220).