Setting up 2 to 3 more Terminal Servers - virtual servers

[sergio1228]

I am currently running VMWare 3 on 3 Host connected to a NetApp FAS2020 FC

Currently we have 4 TS servers running Server 2008, my thought was to just clone one of the servers and then create TS5, TS6 and so on. I think we might be running low on space so I was going to contact NetApp about adding more LUN's to the SAN storage.

Any suggestions or help would be greatly apprecaited.

I will also be looking into licensing for our MS servers, plenty of work to do.

Thanks,

[AndreTheGiant]

my thought was to just clone one of the servers and then create TS5, TS6 and so on

Remember to use also sysprep

Or you can use customize during clone.

For your farm I suggest to have a centralized TS CAL license server.

And if you need load balancing you also need to use Microsoft NBL, or (better) a connection broker for TS services.

Windows 20008 have also a role for do connection broker.

For security you can use a Windows 2008 TS Gateway to transport your TS sessions into a HTTPS tunnel.

Or use other products.

Andre

[dnetz]

Hi,

Consider packaging your TS applications as MSI files or similar and set up a package distribution environment (we use SpecOps Deploy but regular GPO:s might work too) so that instead of cloning a windows server and risk running into sysprep-related problems and cloning other issues you might have with your TS servers, you can instead use a Windows 2008 template (or install OS from scratch) and then let your package distribution program do the rest. This way you can have a new identical TS server up in 30 mins or so.

Hope it helps!

[AndreTheGiant]

For application distribution on TS pool a good idea could be use application virtualization.

ThinApp is very simple.

Softgrid (App-V) or other product could be quite more complicated and sometimes require more infrastructure.

Andre

[sergio1228]

Thank you for your help on this, I am very new to administration so I will have to take a serious look and find out which method will work best(easiest) for our company. I think an MSI deployment would be a great way if I can get the MSI configured but if not, the sysprep might be the most straight forward method.

Thanks again,

[AndreTheGiant]

You're welcome.

Andre

[azn2kew]

Depends how large your terminal services farm looks like, if small you can always use Windows 2008 TS feature RemoteApp and TS Gateway etc..to run a small mimic of Citrix solution. It works really well and easy to implement. You can create a master TS server with all patches and configurations, and then convert to template, you can redeploy it from templates using sysprep customization. ThinApp 4.0 and App-V 4.5 has the pros/cons of each and if you already have VMware solution in house, you could use ThinApp since its simplier. If you have massive MS systems and instrastructures and if you happen to have SCCM/SCOM & MDOP/MED-V solution than using App-V 4.5 along would be a choice since they give you better support from MS. If you spend time architect and testing Windows 2008 TS/RemoteApp that would be a good choice for small solution.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[MHAV]

Hi Sergio

have you checked vOptimizer of Vizioncore?

Regards

[sergio1228]

We have not looked at vOptimizer, I did do a google and it looks like it

could get us some space back.

We need to see what will be the best and most efficient option. We are

really new to VMWare and Server 2008 so everything is just a big learning curve

for us.

I did have a follow up question, not sure if I should create a new post.

I was looking into licensing and it gets really expensive, I was thinking

since our most important VM's are on ESX 3.5, I would install ESXi for the new

TS servers and just have them added to the ESXi server. They would be on

the network and should work fine? Does that sound right?

Thanks for the information.

[MHAV · Accepted solution]

I just talked to a techguy of vizioncore yesterday and invited them to stop by my office on Tuesday to proof what i heard about it.

The vizioncore guy told me he suggest we can save 40-50 percent of our storage with their tool. I would go up to 20% will see what the result will be on tuesday.

ESXi works, in my opinion better then ESX (I´d like to call it classic) because of the console you dont have where third party software can be installed and mess up your ESX-Host.

Any ESXi Host can handle your Terminal Server(s). A guy told me they tried out different configurations of TS on VMware. He figured out the the Advanced or Enterprise Version of Windows works better with TS specially on ESX.