[THIN] MSTerminalServices.org - March 2006 Newsletter

From: "MSTerminalServices.org" <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 09:23:49 -0600

MSTerminalServices.org Newsletter of March 2006
Sponsored by: 2X Software Ltd (http://www.2x.com/loadbalancer/)
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In this issue:
What's up?
KB Articles of the Month
Ask our MVPs!
Learning Zone
On the Spot
Rumours on the SBC Space

Welcome to the MSTerminalServices.org newsletter! Each month we will bring you
interesting and helpful information on MS Terminal Services and server based
computing. We want to know what all *you* are interested in hearing about.
Please send your suggestions for future newsletter content to:
CRodrigues@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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1. What's up?
By Claudio Rodrigues, Terminal Server MVP

Hi there!

March is coming to an end and there is a lot coming up really soon in the
TS/SBC arena.

Apparently for TS/SBC Cebit did not bring anything new or ground breaking. The
same old stuff. As I was busy here in Canada doing my regular consulting stuff,
I did not have a chance to check it out myself this year but after talking to a
bunch of people this seems the case.

But on the other hand, BriForum is only two weeks away! After some discussions
with Brian, I will be there this year presenting two sessions, one about MUI
and the other about Load Balancing TS farms. Pretty cool stuff with lots of
live demos. Make sure you show up in Washington, DC this year. You still have
time to register! Just go to http://www.briforum.com.

We are now working on podcasting, trying to get all the hardware required to do
it. The whole thing is more complicated than you may expect. The main issue is
how to record (with decent quality and with minimum noise) phone conversations.
Brian had some issues with that and after intensive research he found the
hardware that does it properly and is now using it for his Brian Madden Live
show. We should get all that stuff ASAP. Of course we would like to hear from
you guys if podcasting TS stuff here would be a good idea or not. I find it
great, especially when I am driving to work in the morning. An easy and nice
way to get the latest TS news.

Expect to see the next interviews in MP3 format for podcasting here soon. And
speaking about our interviews, for this month we got Art Matin, Softricity's
new CEO. Make sure you read the interview on our 'On the Spot' section.

And on the market, I have been talking to some companies and they are all
working on new releases for their products (2X, Provision Networks, etc). As
soon as I get my hands on their latest offerings I will be posting something on
my Blog. Make sure you check it here
(http://blogs.msterminalservices.org/rodrigues/) (or simply get our RSS feed).

Cheers!

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2. KB Articles of the Month

Here are some interesting and useful Terminal Services related articles posted
by Microsoft in the last month:

A Windows 2000-based terminal server stops responding under a heavy load, and
all users lose their terminal server sessions
(899330) - When a Microsoft Windows 2000-based terminal server is under a heavy
load, the terminal server stops responding (hangs). Therefore, all users lose
their terminal server sessions.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=899330

SQL Server 2000 cluster does not install on Windows Server 2003-based computers
where Terminal Services is installed
(301520) - You cannot install SQL Server 2000 on a computer that runs Microsoft
Windows Server 2003 and that has Terminal Server installed on a server cluster.
After you provide all the correct information to SQL Server 2000 Setup (and
provide the...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301520/en-us

How to configure a Windows Server 2003 terminal server to use TLS for server
authentication
(895433) - You can connect to a remote computer that is running Microsoft
Windows Terminal Services by using a Remote Desktop Protocol connection. This
kind of connection provides encryption for the data that is sent between the
terminal server and the client computer. However,...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895433/en-us

How to apply System Policy settings to Terminal Server
(192794) - Microsoft Windows NT System Policy settings are applied when a user
or a computer account is a member of a Windows NT domain. By comparison, Group
Policy settings are applied when a user or a computer account is a member of an
Active Directory directory service domain. With Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
Terminal Server Edition, you may want to apply System Policy settings to affect
users who log on to the terminal server through the console or through the
Terminal Server client.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/192794/en-us

How To Log On to a Terminal Server Session Programmatically from Visual Basic
(281417) - The Terminal Services ActiveX client control does not expose the
ImsTscNonScriptable interface. However, this interface can be used to configure
automatic log on for a Terminal Services Session programmatically, which
enables the programmer to log a user on to a Terminal Services Session without
receiving the Windows Logon prompt. This is demonstrated in the sample in the
"More Information" section.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281417/en-us

Text is slow to appear or disappear when you type or delete in a table in Word
2002 that is running on a Terminal Server client
(873342) - When you type or delete text in a table in Microsoft Word 2002 that
is running on a Microsoft Terminal Server client, the text is slow to appear or
disappear in the table.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/873342/en-us

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3. Ask our MVPs a question

This is simple and straight forward: shoot us your TS/Citrix question and we
will get some of the top Terminal Services MVPs together and get you an answer,
from everyone?s point of view!
The best question of the month will be published here with all the answers from
these guys.
Just email us at CRodrigues@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

QUESTION: For some unknown reason people insist in not sending us any
questions. I am not sure if it is because they do not like me or if TS became
so incredibly great that no problems arise anymore! So again I got this
question out of my sleeve. Here we go.
'Dear Mr. TS Guru. My company started investigating the TS route and from
everything I have read so far, it seems the way to go. But as anything else in
life, there must be something terribly wrong with it. Could you briefly explain
what are the major issues I can expect on my TS venture?
Anonymous, Somewhere in the Pacific

ANSWER: Dear Anonymous, you are correct. Nothing is perfect in life. Your car,
your house, your wife, anything you decide to take a closer look at will have
something wrong indeed. TS is no different. And before someone tells you Citrix
is the answer to all your problems, I must say all the major issues will be
there with or without Citrix. So let's take a closer look at them.

Printing: if you did not hear anything about printing on a TS environment from
your consultant (as I am sure you hired one to help you on that), get your
Donald Trump costume out of the closet and go for 'You are fired'. Seriously,
printing and TS are like cats and dogs, life and death, water and fire or
anything along these lines. I still have no idea why Microsoft enabled printing
on TS.
Well to be honest, it is not Microsoft fault. When developers learn how to
write printer drivers all these issues will be gone. But until then, printing
will be your biggest issue on a TS environment. I guess we should write an
article about that explaining why the problem exists and what you can do to
minimize it. Actually we will do it.

Profiles: here we go again. This time we can blame Microsoft and their
beautiful implementation/ideas for Profiles. The issue is simple: when you have
multiple TSs, if you want the user to have the same settings no matter where he
connects to, you will need to deal with roaming profiles. And as soon as you do
that, your life will be endangered and/or you will lose some hair.

The good news? There are ways to minimize these issues and/or eliminate them
completely. As I said we will be talking about these here. Check our website
soon.

That is all folks!

4. Learning Zone

MUI in a Terminal Services World
http://www.msterminalservices.org/articles/MUI-Terminal-Services.html
Date - Mar 7, 2006; Author - Cláudio Rodrigues; Section - Articles :: General
This article describes what MUI (Multilingual User Interface) is and the main
reasons why it is a must on corporate environments dealing with multiple
language requirements.

Securing Your Terminal/Citrix Servers with The Security Configuration Wizard
http://www.msterminalservices.org/articles/Securing-Terminal-Citrix-Servers-Security-Configuration-Wizard.html
Date - Mar 16, 2006; Author - Michel Roth; Section - Articles :: Security
Terminal/Citrix environments by their very nature allow interactive access to
their servers. Interactive access to a server also happens to be the Valhalla
in hackerland. Seems like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, right?
There's only one thing to do: secure those servers! One of the tools you should
use to secure your servers is the Security Configuration Wizard.

5. On The Spot

For our first interview we got Art Matin, Softricity's CEO. If you do not know
Softricity (http://www.softricity.com/home/index.asp), make sure you check them
out. They have a very interesting technology that can be used on its own or on
a TS environment. Imagine a Citrix world with no silos. Yes, it may give you
that. So here we go?

Cláudio: As of today companies are struggling to manage all the issues that
come with the typical client server approach where pretty much all applications
reside on the client side. These include application conflicts, application
deployment management and so on. Softricity's solution resolves all these
issues but like in a client-server world, if your PC is slow, your
applications, no matter if delivered by SoftGrid, will be slow. This means
companies are back to the hardware replacement cycle, where they must replace
corporate PCs all the time as they get slower because applications are more
demanding. What is Softricity doing to avoid or minimize this huge expense that
comes with fat clients, that all companies are trying as much as possible to
avoid?

Art: The majority of the costs associated with desktops do not come from the
cost of the hardware; it's the cost of managing the software that runs on the
client. Until Softricity's application virtualization and streaming, the
process of testing for conflicts, resolving incompatibilities, installations,
support and uninstalls represented over 70% of the total cost of ownership.
What our technologies enable is the ability to manage rich clients in the same
way you can manage thin clients, but without the need for a large and costly
server infrastructure in your data center. We recently introduced our Return on
Virtualization calculator, which we developed in conjunction with Forrester
Research, and have found that our customers see an 80% reduction in application
management costs once they implement virtualization and streaming.

Cláudio: Comparing Softricity's approach to a server based computing solution
like Terminal Services, where all applications run on the server side,
therefore preserving the user's workstation environment exactly like SoftGrid
does, and at the same time, not requiring the workstation power required by
Softricity, what do you think are the PROs and CONs (of course Softricity's
approach is not all about PROs!) of these two approaches (SoftGrid and
traditional Server Based Computing - TS/Citrix)?

Art: Server-based computing is an excellent solution for certain situations,
such as remote access (low-bandwidth) and when you need to keep all data within
the data center. What Softricity offers is a way to keep using SBC in this way,
but to extend the centralization enterprise-wide to desktop users. In fact, our
platform consolidates the management of applications for SBC and the desktop by
allowing the same virtualized application to run on both terminal servers and
desktops. So the question is not one being a better solution than the other -
it's where each are best used given the current needs of the user (device,
bandwidth, type of application, etc.).

Cláudio: In the past, Softricity focused heavily on the SBC market, selling
itself as a great tool for terminal services/Citrix environments. This focus
now shifted to the desktop market and many people see Softricity as a
competitor when compared to TS/Citrix. What would be the main reason for that
shift?

Art: Softricity continues to offer its technology for the SBC market. In fact,
despite technologies that have appeared in the last year with "isolation"
features, we have sold more of the terminal services client than ever before.
That said, it has become clear to enterprises that this technology is more
significant than for simply streamlining remote access and data centralization
solutions, and that our Universal product can enable them to build the
foundation for their strategic, enterprise-wide deployments to the desktop.

Cláudio: How do you envision Softgrid virtualization technologies fitting into
an enterprise environment as Microsoft urges the industry towards Avalon, with
its client-side rendering capabilities?

Art: We are working today with Microsoft on a number of initiatives. First, as
we announced in February, we are working with their Manageability Team to
integrate virtualization and streaming into Microsoft SMS. This is happening
through joint sales and marketing in the field (we recently announced a
world-wide Virtualization Tour with Microsoft) as well as with our new product,
SoftGrid for SMS, which allows users to have all the functionality of
virtualization and streaming from within the SMS platform. As for Vista and
Avalon, we clearly can play a role, as the client-side rendering will require
local-processing power - yet another example where we can centralized the
deployment and management but allow the desktop to take on the processing
instead of building out large server farms.

Cláudio: Are there plans in the future for a method of delivering non-Windows
applications? Or even Windows applications to non-Windows clients?

Art: Today the clear opportunity for Softricity is with Windows, which runs on
over 94% of enterprise desktops. However, if you do want to run virtualized
Windows applications on non-Windows devices, our architecture allows you to do
this by routing the application to terminal services and Citrix servers - which
can then screen-scrape the virtualized application to other platforms.

Cláudio: One neat idea a friend of mine mentioned - Thanks Matt - would be to
have Softricity partnering with ISVs so that their software could be shipped
'pre-sequenced'. I would simply buy a package from the vendor that I could
import immediately to the SoftGrid server, with no sequencing involved. Is
Softricity working on something like that with ISVs?

Art: Today we partnered with a number of ISVs using just this scenario. The one
we have announced is Cerner, the hospital management software company. You're
right - it's an excellent way for end-customers to quickly get a virtualized
application and immediately - without any further testing - put it into
production. Expect to hear more about this model from us in the future.

Cláudio: And finally, the question that everyone is probably asking you all the
time: When are you guys going IPO?

Art: I can't give you a time frame on that. Our goals right now are to be a
company that delivers tremendous value to our customers and to continue to
focus on innovation and extend our technology lead in application
virtualization, a space we pioneered. We're well on our way.

Cláudio: Art, again, thanks for your valuable time. It was a pleasure talking
to you and I am sure our readers will appreciate your time today. We hope to
talk to you again soon.

Art: Thank you Cláudio for the opportunity!

6. Rumors on the SBC Space

Well, one of the guys behind Terminal-Services.NET (me! What a coincidence!),
that brought you tools like WTSGateway Pro, WTSPortal and others will soon
bring you some more exciting tools, to be shown for the first time at BriForum!
Another reason for you to sign up for it as soon as possible.

And from the Microsoft end, Longhorn is moving fast and many improvements were
made on the latest build available to important people like Ron Oglesby.

Before I sort out what is NDA and what is not, I will not comment on that. But
I must say I am happy to see they are listening and improving it to the point
it is useable.

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[THIN] MSTerminalServices.org - March 2006 Newsletter

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