• What's up?
• KB Articles of the Month
• Ask our MVPs!
• Learning Zone
• On the Spot
• Rumors on the SBC Space

1. What's up?

Hi there!

March is coming to an end and there is a lot coming up really soon in the TS/SBC arena.

Apparently for TS/SBC Cebit did not bring anything new or ground breaking. The same old stuff. As I was busy here in Canada doing my regular consulting stuff, I did not have a chance to check it out myself this year but after talking to a bunch of people this seems the case.

But on the other hand, BriForum is only two weeks away! After some discussions with Brian, I will be there this year presenting two sessions, one about MUI and the other about Load Balancing TS farms. Pretty cool stuff with lots of live demos. Make sure you show up in Washington, DC this year. You still have time to register! Just go to http://www.briforum.com.

We are now working on podcasting, trying to get all the hardware required to do it. The whole thing is more complicated than you may expect. The main issue is how to record (with decent quality and with minimum noise) phone conversations. Brian had some issues with that and after intensive research he found the hardware that does it properly and is now using it for his Brian Madden Live show. We should get all that stuff ASAP. Of course we would like to hear from you guys if podcasting TS stuff here would be a good idea or not. I find it great, especially when I am driving to work in the morning. An easy and nice way to get the latest TS news.

Expect to see the next interviews in MP3 format for podcasting here soon. And speaking about our interviews, for this month we got Art Matin, Softricity's new CEO. Make sure you read the interview on our 'On the Spot' section.

Expect to see the next interviews in MP3 format for podcasting here soon. And speaking about our interviews, for this month we got Art Matin, Softricity's new CEO. Make sure you read the interview on our 'On the Spot' section.

And on the market, I have been talking to some companies and they are all working on new releases for their products (2X, Provision Networks, etc). As soon as I get my hands on their latest offerings I will be posting something on my Blog. Make sure you check it here (or simply get our RSS feed).

Cheers!

2. KB Articles of the Month

Here are some interesting and useful Terminal Services related articles posted by Microsoft in the last month:

• A Windows 2000-based terminal server stops responding under a heavy load, and all users lose their terminal server sessions

(899330) - When a Microsoft Windows 2000-based terminal server is under a heavy load, the terminal server stops responding (hangs). Therefore, all users lose their terminal server sessions.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=899330

• SQL Server 2000 cluster does not install on Windows Server 2003-based computers where Terminal Services is installed

(301520) - You cannot install SQL Server 2000 on a computer that runs Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and that has Terminal Server installed on a server cluster. After you provide all the correct information to SQL Server 2000 Setup (and provide the...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301520/en-us

• How to configure a Windows Server 2003 terminal server to use TLS for server authentication

(895433) - You can connect to a remote computer that is running Microsoft Windows Terminal Services by using a Remote Desktop Protocol connection. This kind of connection provides encryption for the data that is sent between the terminal server and the client computer. However,...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895433/en-us

• How to apply System Policy settings to Terminal Server

(192794) - Microsoft Windows NT System Policy settings are applied when a user or a computer account is a member of a Windows NT domain. By comparison, Group Policy settings are applied when a user or a computer account is a member of an Active Directory directory service domain. With Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Terminal Server Edition, you may want to apply System Policy settings to affect users who log on to the terminal server through the console or through the Terminal Server client.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/192794/en-us

• How To Log On to a Terminal Server Session Programmatically from Visual Basic

(281417) - The Terminal Services ActiveX client control does not expose the ImsTscNonScriptable interface. However, this interface can be used to configure automatic log on for a Terminal Services Session programmatically, which enables the programmer to log a user on to a Terminal Services Session without receiving the Windows Logon prompt. This is demonstrated in the sample in the "More Information" section.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281417/en-us

• Text is slow to appear or disappear when you type or delete in a table in Word 2002 that is running on a Terminal Server client

(873342) - When you type or delete text in a table in Microsoft Word 2002 that is running on a Microsoft Terminal Server client, the text is slow to appear or disappear in the table.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/873342/en-us

3. Ask our MVPs a question

This is simple and straight forward: shoot us your TS/Citrix question and we will get some of the top Terminal Services MVPs together and get you an answer, from everyone’s point of view! The best question of the month will be published here with all the answers from these guys. Just email us at CRodrigues@MSTerminalServices.org.

QUESTION: For some unknown reason people insist in not sending us any questions. I am not sure if it is because they do not like me or if TS became so incredibly great that no problems arise anymore! So again I got this question out of my sleeve. Here we go.
'Dear Mr. TS Guru. My company started investigating the TS route and from everything I have read so far, it seems the way to go. But as anything else in life, there must be something terribly wrong with it. Could you briefly explain what are the major issues I can expect on my TS venture? Anonymous, Somewhere in the Pacific

ANSWER: Dear Anonymous, you are correct. Nothing is perfect in life. Your car, your house, your wife, anything you decide to take a closer look at will have something wrong indeed. TS is no different. And before someone tells you Citrix is the answer to all your problems, I must say all the major issues will be there with or without Citrix. So let's take a closer look at them.

Printing: if you did not hear anything about printing on a TS environment from your consultant (as I am sure you hired one to help you on that), get your Donald Trump costume out of the closet and go for 'You are fired'. Seriously, printing and TS are like cats and dogs, life and death, water and fire or anything along these lines. I still have no idea why Microsoft enabled printing on TS.
Well to be honest, it is not Microsoft fault. When developers learn how to write printer drivers all these issues will be gone. But until then, printing will be your biggest issue on a TS environment. I guess we should write an article about that explaining why the problem exists and what you can do to minimize it. Actually we will do it.

Profiles: here we go again. This time we can blame Microsoft and their beautiful implementation/ideas for Profiles. The issue is simple: when you have multiple TSs, if you want the user to have the same settings no matter where he connects to, you will need to deal with roaming profiles. And as soon as you do that, your life will be endangered and/or you will lose some hair.

The good news? There are ways to minimize these issues and/or eliminate them completely. As I said we will be talking about these here. Check our website soon.

That is all folks!

4. Learning Zone

We have a great group of articles in the Learning Zone that will help you get a handle on your most difficult configuration issues. Here are just a few of the newer and more interesting articles:

• MUI in a Terminal Services World

Date - Mar 7, 2006; Author - Cláudio Rodrigues; Section - Articles :: General

This article describes what MUI (Multilingual User Interface) is and the main reasons why it is a must on corporate environments dealing with multiple language requirements.

• Securing Your Terminal/Citrix Servers with The Security Configuration Wizard

Date - Mar 16, 2006; Author - Michel Roth; Section - Articles :: Security

Terminal/Citrix environments by their very nature allow interactive access to their servers. Interactive access to a server also happens to be the Valhalla in hackerland. Seems like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, right? There's only one thing to do: secure those servers! One of the tools you should use to secure your servers is the Security Configuration Wizard.

5. On The Spot

For our first interview we got Art Matin, Softricity's CEO. If you do not know Softricity, make sure you check them out. They have a very interesting technology that can be used on its own or on a TS environment. Imagine a Citrix world with no silos. Yes, it may give you that. So here we go…

Cláudio: As of today companies are struggling to manage all the issues that come with the typical client server approach where pretty much all applications reside on the client side. These include application conflicts, application deployment management and so on. Softricity's solution resolves all these issues but like in a client-server world, if your PC is slow, your applications, no matter if delivered by SoftGrid, will be slow. This means companies are back to the hardware replacement cycle, where they must replace corporate PCs all the time as they get slower because applications are more demanding. What is Softricity doing to avoid or minimize this huge expense that comes with fat clients, that all companies are trying as much as possible to avoid?

Art: The majority of the costs associated with desktops do not come from the cost of the hardware; it's the cost of managing the software that runs on the client. Until Softricity's application virtualization and streaming, the process of testing for conflicts, resolving incompatibilities, installations, support and uninstalls represented over 70% of the total cost of ownership. What our technologies enable is the ability to manage rich clients in the same way you can manage thin clients, but without the need for a large and costly server infrastructure in your data center. We recently introduced our Return on Virtualization calculator, which we developed in conjunction with Forrester Research, and have found that our customers see an 80% reduction in application management costs once they implement virtualization and streaming.

Cláudio: Comparing Softricity's approach to a server based computing solution like Terminal Services, where all applications run on the server side, therefore preserving the user's workstation environment exactly like SoftGrid does, and at the same time, not requiring the workstation power required by Softricity, what do you think are the PROs and CONs (of course Softricity's approach is not all about PROs!) of these two approaches (SoftGrid and traditional Server Based Computing - TS/Citrix)?

Art: Server-based computing is an excellent solution for certain situations, such as remote access (low-bandwidth) and when you need to keep all data within the data center. What Softricity offers is a way to keep using SBC in this way, but to extend the centralization enterprise-wide to desktop users. In fact, our platform consolidates the management of applications for SBC and the desktop by allowing the same virtualized application to run on both terminal servers and desktops. So the question is not one being a better solution than the other - it's where each are best used given the current needs of the user (device, bandwidth, type of application, etc.).

Cláudio: In the past, Softricity focused heavily on the SBC market, selling itself as a great tool for terminal services/Citrix environments. This focus now shifted to the desktop market and many people see Softricity as a competitor when compared to TS/Citrix. What would be the main reason for that shift?

Art: Softricity continues to offer its technology for the SBC market. In fact, despite technologies that have appeared in the last year with "isolation" features, we have sold more of the terminal services client than ever before. That said, it has become clear to enterprises that this technology is more significant than for simply streamlining remote access and data centralization solutions, and that our Universal product can enable them to build the foundation for their strategic, enterprise-wide deployments to the desktop.

Cláudio: How do you envision Softgrid virtualization technologies fitting into an enterprise environment as Microsoft urges the industry towards Avalon, with its client-side rendering capabilities?

Art: We are working today with Microsoft on a number of initiatives. First, as we announced in February, we are working with their Manageability Team to integrate virtualization and streaming into Microsoft SMS. This is happening through joint sales and marketing in the field (we recently announced a world-wide Virtualization Tour with Microsoft) as well as with our new product, SoftGrid for SMS, which allows users to have all the functionality of virtualization and streaming from within the SMS platform. As for Vista and Avalon, we clearly can play a role, as the client-side rendering will require local-processing power - yet another example where we can centralized the deployment and management but allow the desktop to take on the processing instead of building out large server farms.

Cláudio: Are there plans in the future for a method of delivering non-Windows applications? Or even Windows applications to non-Windows clients?

Art: Today the clear opportunity for Softricity is with Windows, which runs on over 94% of enterprise desktops. However, if you do want to run virtualized Windows applications on non-Windows devices, our architecture allows you to do this by routing the application to terminal services and Citrix servers - which can then screen-scrape the virtualized application to other platforms.

Cláudio: One neat idea a friend of mine mentioned - Thanks Matt - would be to have Softricity partnering with ISVs so that their software could be shipped 'pre-sequenced'. I would simply buy a package from the vendor that I could import immediately to the SoftGrid server, with no sequencing involved. Is Softricity working on something like that with ISVs?

Art: Today we partnered with a number of ISVs using just this scenario. The one we have announced is Cerner, the hospital management software company. You're right - it's an excellent way for end-customers to quickly get a virtualized application and immediately - without any further testing - put it into production. Expect to hear more about this model from us in the future.

Cláudio: And finally, the question that everyone is probably asking you all the time: When are you guys going IPO?

Art: I can't give you a time frame on that. Our goals right now are to be a company that delivers tremendous value to our customers and to continue to focus on innovation and extend our technology lead in application virtualization, a space we pioneered. We're well on our way.

Cláudio: Art, again, thanks for your valuable time. It was a pleasure talking to you and I am sure our readers will appreciate your time today. We hope to talk to you again soon.

Art: Thank you Cláudio for the opportunity!

6. Rumors on the SBC Space

Well, one of the guys behind Terminal-Services.NET (me! What a coincidence!), that brought you tools like WTSGateway Pro, WTSPortal and others will soon bring you some more exciting tools, to be shown for the first time at BriForum! Another reason for you to sign up for it as soon as possible.

And from the Microsoft end, Longhorn is moving fast and many improvements were made on the latest build available to important people like Ron Oglesby.

Before I sort out what is NDA and what is not, I will not comment on that. But I must say I am happy to see they are listening and improving it to the point it is useable.