Managing Windows Servers with Terminal Services

Administering multiple Windows 2000 Servers in a multi-site environment can sometimes become a tedious task to say the least. Picture this scenario: your company has four offices, two within a kilometer of each other, another approximately 100 km away, and the fourth resides in a totally different country. You are responsible for all the Win2K servers in each office. How much travel time do you have to account for in your daily administrative workload, just to perform minor updates, troubleshooting, or configurations of these servers? Fortunately, Microsoft has bundled a very useful component into the Win2K OS called Terminal Services, which can be used to remotely administer Windows 2000 Servers on your network. The Microsoft Terminal Services Client software used to make connections to Terminal Serves communicates over a TCP/IP network connection using the Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). When configured in Remote Administration Mode, Terminal Services provides a free and powerful tool that can save you time and your company money, by allowing you to remotely administer your servers right from your desk, using a variety of client connection options.

Terminal Services can be installed in one of two modes: Remote Administration mode or Application Server mode. Remote Admin mode provides you with up to two connections, and does not require any additional licensing or cost. By default, Users in the Administrators group will have permissions to make a connection to your server configured for Remote Admin. Application Server mode provides connections based on purchased client licenses and is used in a thin client server-based computing environment. To install Terminal Services on your server, select the Add/Remove Windows Components icon located in Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel.