How This Book is Structured

This book is made up of fifteen chapters divided into four parts.

Technical books such as this are not always read straight through from cover to cover. Instead, many readers immediately turn to the chapter that is most relevant to their current environment. To facilitate this, each chapter of this book has been structured and written like an independent white paper so that all of the information you need is in the chapter that you're reading. When outside information is needed, the chapter where it can be found is referenced.

If you have some experience with Terminal Server running on Windows Server 2003, Chapters 1 and 2 of this book are probably the most boring since they contain a lot of overview and introductory information. However, if you're new to Terminal Server, the chapters of this book have been structured logically so you can read them in the order that they are arranged.

Another important thing about this book is that the topics of each chapter are "solutions focused" instead of "tool focused." For example, you will not find a chapter that explains what every single option does in the Terminal Services MMC snap-in. (If you want that, read the Microsoft product documentation.) Instead, this book details where certain options can be configured only when you need to configure them as part of your design.

Lastly, this book is designed to provide a "real world" look at how Terminal Server is really used and how real environments are put together. As you can see by quickly flipping though it, this book is not full of screenshots. (In fact, there are only two.) In highly technical books, they are a waste of space and often used to make a book appear thicker. (No one needs to read a passage about how to install Terminal Server with a screenshot of the "Click Next to Continue" screen.) If you need screen shots, read the manual.