Terminal Services Archives • Helge Klein

XenApp and RDS Sizing Part 3 – Determining Farm Load

This article is part of a mini-series. You can find the other articles here. In the previous part of this series we saw how to determine the capacity of a server farm. This time we will look at how that capacity is utilized, in other words at farm load. As before we will do that […]

XenApp and RDS Sizing Part 2 – Determining Farm Capacity

This article is part of a mini-series. You can find the other articles here. As we have seen in part 1 of this series, when sizing a new farm the first thing we need to know is the capacity of the existing farm. Armed with data on capacity and additionally load, we can easily calculate […]

XenApp and RDS Sizing Part 1 – Methodology

This article is part of a mini-series. You can find the other articles here. One of the first things you need to do after starting a XenApp farm upgrade project is to answer the obvious question from management: how much will it cost? In order to be able to answer, you need to have a […]

Active Setup Explained

New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Office 2010, RDS/XenApp, Windows, Web

As before this is mainly a condensed and beautified version of my twitter postings. You can get them unfiltered and without delay by following me.

Fixing Office 2007’s Quick Access Toolbars With Citrix User Profile Manager

Not sure where user profile management might be useful? Here is an example that should apply to almost everyone.

Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM) and the Broken Rootdrive

Terminal server application compatibility scripts have been around for a long time – so long in fact, that I considered them a legacy and stowed away any knowledge of them in a very remote area of my brain. When a Citrix customer brought up a problem with the mapping of ROOTDRIVE in the User Profile […]

How Much Memory Does a Database/File/Print/Terminal/Web Server Need?

Here are some very simple guidelines that help determine how much memory a particular server actually needs in order to perform well. Of course, these are just rules of thumb, but nevertheless they might come in handy.

Four Ways to Increase the Capacity of Your Citrix XenApp Farm

Even with the most meticulous design, the day will come when your farm’s capacity is not sufficient any more. User numbers increase, applications become more resource-hungry and the amount of data to be handled increases steadily. So what do you do? Simply more of the same, i.e. buy more servers and add them to the […]

Microsoft Tackles the "Last Writer Wins" Problem of Roaming Profiles in Windows 7 & Server 2008 R2

Among the more annoying deficiencies of roaming user profiles in terminal server farms is what came to be known as “last writer wins”. It looks like Microsoft is trying to address the issue in the upcoming next version of its operating systems. Although this is a step in the right direction, I have doubts about […]

User Profile Design: A Primer

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. This article tries list the dos and don’ts that need to be considered when creating a user profile design. It focuses on functionality built into Windows. Third-party solutions that replace or complement […]

How to Reduce the Size of Roaming Profiles

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. Roaming user profiles tend to grow over time, which is sometimes referred to as profile bloat. In and by itself, profile growth is not a problem. Users of desktop PCs who log […]

Finally! Font Smoothing Over RDP/ICA on Server 2003

It took five years and probably lots of customer complaints, but finally one of the most important technologies introduced with XP/Server 2003 is available over the remoting protocols RDP and ICA: font smoothing aka ClearType. If you have read other articles on this blog you know that I deem font smoothing indispensable on today’s LCD […]

x64? My Terminal Servers Run Just Fine With 32 Bits and 8/12/16 GB RAM!

A recent discussion with a colleague brought this topic to my attention which I have not discussed in detail in my series on Windows x64: Memory scalability of 32-bit Terminal Servers Many people seem to think that on 32-bit Windows only specially adapted applications can access memory above 4 GB. Since such applications are rare […]

The Most Interesting New Feature of Server 2008 Terminal Services / XenApp 5.0? Why, Font Smoothing!

Much has been written about the many new features of Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services. Now, with the upcoming release of Citrix XenApp 5.0 (Project Delaware), Citrix updates its best-selling product and ports it to the new platform. Brian Madden analyzes whether it is still worth buying Citrix XenApp / Presentation Server on top of […]

Windows x64 Part 3: CPUs, AMD64, Intel 64, EM64T, Itanium

This is the third part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the first two articles (here and here) I explained key concepts and limitations of the x86 platform: every 32-bit process can use 2 GB of address space, which is by far enough for […]

Windows x64 Part 2: Kernel Memory, /3GB, PTEs, (Non-) Paged Pool

This is the second part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the first article I explained key concepts of the x86 platform, namely that user-mode processes each get 4 GB of virtual address space, but can use only half of it, because 2 GB […]

Windows x64 Part 1: Virtual Memory

I will start the new year with a small series on Windows x64 in which I will explain why 64-bit computing is not only necessary but inevitable. I will then go on to explain in detail where Windows x64 differs from the 32-bit versions and what that means for all those who are responsible for […]

Soup Up Your Terminal Server: Optimizing Explorer’s Network Performance

Update: The ADM file can now be downloaded here. I recently came across a post in the Windows Server Performance Team’s blog that lists several registry values which can be used to tune Explorer’s SMB performance by modifying the following: Searches for Desktop.ini files used for folder customization Periodic refreshes of folder contents Searches for […]

Taming Black Holes: Parallel Session Creation

Have you ever tried to log on to a terminal server and, after entering your credentials, been forced to stare at a grey screen for a lengthy period of time wondering what the machine might actually be doing? Of course you have, along with a few million other terminal server users. Being a technical guy […]

ClearType Bandwidth Revisited – Testing 32 Bit Color Depth

In an earlier post I wrote about how bandwidth requirements of the RDP protocol are affected by enabling font smoothing (ClearType over RDP version 6) on Windows Server 2008. Jan, a reader of that article, posted an interesting comment: he had heard that RDP version 6 was optimized for a color depth of 32 bits […]

Programmatically Determining Terminal Server Mode on Windows Server 2008

A question on the terminal services newsgroup brought this topic to my attention: how can be determined programmatically if a Windows Server 2008 system is a terminal server and whether it runs in application server or remote administration mode?

Bandwidth Requirements for ClearType over RDP

In an earlier post I wrote about a great technology that finally makes it into terminal services with Windows Server 2008: ClearType or Font Smoothing, as it is sometimes called. I will stick to the term ClearType for the time being. ClearType greatly enhances the display of fonts on the nowadays prevalent LCD screens. By […]

Windows Server 2008: Architectural Changes Relevant to Terminal Services #2

This post covers a technology developed by Microsoft Research in the late 90s that finally made it into terminal services: ClearType. ClearType As is sometimes the case with technology, it is difficult to explain how it works, yet easy to see the benefits. Let us start with the easy part.

Windows Server 2008: Architectural Changes Relevant to Terminal Services #1

I will start this blog with a small series of posts that describe changes to the architecture of Windows Server 2008 that are relevant to Terminal Services.

Tag: Terminal Services

XenApp and RDS Sizing Part 3 – Determining Farm Load

XenApp and RDS Sizing Part 2 – Determining Farm Capacity

XenApp and RDS Sizing Part 1 – Methodology

Active Setup Explained

New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Office 2010, RDS/XenApp, Windows, Web

Fixing Office 2007’s Quick Access Toolbars With Citrix User Profile Manager

Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM) and the Broken Rootdrive

How Much Memory Does a Database/File/Print/Terminal/Web Server Need?

Four Ways to Increase the Capacity of Your Citrix XenApp Farm

Microsoft Tackles the "Last Writer Wins" Problem of Roaming Profiles in Windows 7 & Server 2008 R2

User Profile Design: A Primer

How to Reduce the Size of Roaming Profiles

Finally! Font Smoothing Over RDP/ICA on Server 2003

x64? My Terminal Servers Run Just Fine With 32 Bits and 8/12/16 GB RAM!

The Most Interesting New Feature of Server 2008 Terminal Services / XenApp 5.0? Why, Font Smoothing!

Windows x64 Part 3: CPUs, AMD64, Intel 64, EM64T, Itanium

Windows x64 Part 2: Kernel Memory, /3GB, PTEs, (Non-) Paged Pool

Windows x64 Part 1: Virtual Memory

Soup Up Your Terminal Server: Optimizing Explorer’s Network Performance

Taming Black Holes: Parallel Session Creation

ClearType Bandwidth Revisited – Testing 32 Bit Color Depth

Programmatically Determining Terminal Server Mode on Windows Server 2008

Bandwidth Requirements for ClearType over RDP

Windows Server 2008: Architectural Changes Relevant to Terminal Services #2

Windows Server 2008: Architectural Changes Relevant to Terminal Services #1