Chapter 11: Server Configuration--Windows Terminal Services

OVERVIEW

As we've established thus far in this book, it takes far more to build an access platform than just following the installation manuals for Microsoft Windows Server. In this chapter, we will discuss the installation and configuration tips, tricks, and techniques we have developed over the last seven years of working with the on-demand access products from Citrix and Microsoft. Clearly, most of the work required to build an access platform is in building and configuring the servers and applications, and thus this chapter covers the many nuances and tricks to sizing and building a stable Terminal Services Farm based on Windows Server 2003. The next chapter, Chapter 12, will cover the installation and configuration of Citrix Presentation Server, and Chapter 13 will cover the installation of the applications. All three chapters will provide installation steps in the form of checklists. Our checklists will include not only the steps to installing and configuring the software, but also explanations of pertinent options and their effects, indications where additional configuration may be required, information on hotfixes and service packs , and general information we think is necessary in order to deploy the technology effectively.

We will assume, for the purposes of this chapter, that the reader is familiar with the basics of installing and configuring, and with administering Windows Server 2003.

Although we provide detailed, step-by-step instructions, we are not advocating that every server be built from scratch. Rather, we will also discuss how to use various tools to effectively create additional servers from a standard image. This standard image will be accessed from an application deployment server or CD-ROM to automatically build additional servers in the server farm.

Caution 

Many of the suggestions and recommendations in this chapter involve making changes directly to the Registry.

We recommend that readers adhere to the following safety guidelines before making any of these changes:

• – Become familiar with REGEDT32.

• – Always make backups to the key being changed with the REGEDT32 "save key" feature. This will allow you to go back to a previous state and possibly save hours of rebuilding as you create your first "gold image."

• – Never change the Registry on a production server or on a server you can't otherwise afford to lose.

We have tested these changes on several production systems, but it isn't practical to test them on all hardware platforms and configuration settings. Accordingly we recommend strongly that you follow pilot and beta methodology and thoroughly test these changes before relying on them in a production Citrix environment.