Section 10.2. Requirements for Terminal Services


10.2. Requirements for Terminal Services

Because most of the processing power that was traditionally on the desktop has moved to the server in a Terminal Services scenario, it follows that the machine hosting Terminal Services for your users should be significantly beefier than you might otherwise be used to. Perhaps the two most interesting points on the radar as far as hardware requirements are CPU and RAM, followed by the network interface and links.

10.2.1. CPU Requirements

CPU requirements can be difficult to measure because individual users require different slices of processor time at different intervals. Two main factors determine CPU usage: intensity of the applications that users are running, and the number of simultaneous users. Table 10-1 gives a rough estimate for CPU requirements based on number of users and application intensity.

Table 10-1. Rough estimates of CPU requirements for Terminal Services

Simultaneous users

Intensity of application(s)

Recommended processor

20-25

Low

Pentium III 750MHz+

High

Dual Pentium III 750MHz+ or Pentium IV Xeon any speed

35-40

Low

Pentium III or IV, 1GHz+

High

Dual Pentium IV Xeon 2GHz+

50-55

Low

Dual Pentium IV Xeon 2GHz+

High

Not recommended


10.2.2. Amount of RAM

Here are some hard and fast facts about RAM usage with Terminal Services that you might find helpful:

  • Each user, upon just logging in, occupies roughly 20MB of the Terminal Services host machine's RAM.

  • A typical load of two to three Office applications per user will add approximately another 25MB of RAM to the load.

Of course, additional applications on top of that consume more RAM, and power users typically will not run only Office applications, but rather, more powerful applications that require more hardware resources.

10.2.3. Network Interface Card

The Network Interface Card (NIC) is managed by Windows and should not require any configuration for use with Terminal Services. However, the focus should be more on bandwidth and latency available on the network to which the card is connected, and not necessarily on the card itself.

Terminal Services does a surprisingly nice job of adjusting the bandwidth usage of the RDP client to the conditions of the link to which it's connected with the host. You can expect that most RDP connections will take up between 2kbps and 7kbps, depending on the depth of color requested by the client, the amount of graphics being transmitted, whether sound is included, and other options.

10.2.4. Disk Space

The actual Terminal Services components inside Windows Server 2003 do not require any additional disk space on top of that consumed by the normal system files. Around 15MB is taken up for the file share that stores the client installation files for RDP. As well, users store about half a megabyte of data for their Terminal Services profile information when they first log on to a server. (Remember that Terminal Services users' profiles are automatically roaming because their sessions follow them to whatever workstation is running the RDP client.) Other than this, not much disk space is required to support RDP.



    Learning Windows Server 2003
    Learning Windows Server 2003
    ISBN: 0596101236
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2003
    Pages: 149

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