Terminal Services in Windows 2003

In an effort to provide some file sharing and applications to our China office, I delved into Terminal Server that was built into Windows Server 2003. (My first thought was Windows Sharepoint Services which is free with a licensed copy of Server 2003, but that's another blog entry.)

First decision was whether or not I needed Standard or Enterprise Windows 2003 server. I went with standard since we were not planning for a multi-server implementation. A comparison can be found here .

Installation was painless since it's all built-in components on the Windows Server 2003 CD. I did defer from the recommendations and install the licensing server on the same box, since this was going to be a small implementation.

Speaking of licensing, one really interesting thing I found was that Microsoft was providing a 1:1 licensing match for Terminal Services based on the number of XP Desktop licenses you had when Windows 2003 shipped. Check the bottom of this article.

I only had a few applications to install, one of them being Office 2000 which required a special MST .

I also found Deb Shinder's article on securing Terminal Services in Windows 2000 useful.