Deploying a Windows Server 2008 Terminal Server Farm using TS Session Broker

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One of the problems presented by the implementation of Terminal Services on Windows Server 2008 is that it places a greater burden on the server than a file server or web server would do. The reason for this is that the all the applications being run by remote users are running on the server, taking up memory and processing power. Acutely aware of this problem, Microsoft introduced the TS Session Broker which allows for the creation of load balanced Terminal Server Farms.

The objective of this chapter is to provide the basic information needed to configure Terminal Server load balancing using the TS Session Broker.

An Overview of the Terminal Services Session Broker

The TS Session Broker is positioned on the front line in front of two or more servers running terminal servers and is responsible for balancing terminal service load requests between authorized servers such that a single server does not become overloaded. TS Session Broker can be run on a serser specifically designated for the task, or, since the broker itself does not require significant resources, on one of the terminal servers in the group.

Load balancing may be configured using a concept known as relative weighting or using round-robin DNS. Under relative weighting, an administrator specifies each server a weight value (based on percentages) which, relative to the weights assigned to other servers, governs the load levels on that server. For example, a server with a weight of 30 will have a load of 30% of the load of another server in the farm with a weight of 100. it is important to understand that loading is based on number of sessions on each server, and not any knowledge of the total resource load on a particular server at a given time. For example, one server with small 'resource light' application will be viewed by the TS Session Broker as being at the same load level as a server with a large, resource intensive application.

Round-robin DNS, as the name suggest, passes the load balancing responsibility onto a DNS server.

Enabling the Terminal Services Session Broker

For the purposes of this chapter a configuration consisting of two Terminal Servers (named winserver-1 and winserver-2 respectively) and one TS Session Broker (named winserver-3) will be used.