This is indeed a great article and discussion:

http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2006/...6.aspx

The whole thing is about what is better having on your PC: an anti-virus that requires an administrative account to run (like administrator) or no anti-virus at all but in this case you logging in with a limited user account (LUA)?

Great points by the author and others. Worth reading for sure. I think there is a lot there that is related to a TS environment (where all users should be in many ways restricted).

Hey guys,

For all you that missed the live webcast last week, it is now available on the Microsoft website. So if you want to watch it, simply click here.

Of course as on all webcasts like that Microsoft always says nice things about Citrix, how great they are, etc. Sure…

See you!

As I mentioned on an earlier post, 2X was working on clients for their ApplicationServer, for Mac OS and Linux.

So these are finally out and that is great news. It is great to see companies now doing many things that were exclusive to the Citrix world. They even came out with a neat, although very basic, web interface (similar to Citrix Web Interface).

If they continue working on the product I am sure soon we will see all the must have features there, giving Citrix a run for its money. Big time.

Take a look at the 2X ApplicationServer. For many small/medium businesses it will do all they are looking for. Add the 2X LoadBalancer to the picture and here you go, RDP based SSL access to resource based load balanced terminal servers with Seamless Windows and Mac OS X/Linux clients! That is cool.

Cheers.

Hey guys,

When you have some free time take a look at Brian and Rick’s trip through the West Coast. They are blogging quite often and man, I wish I had the time to be there with them (I am 100% sure they would NEVER accept me… ).

Great trip with some great planned stops at many cool places. All this to talk about the TS/Citrix community, technologies and how we can interact in a better way with Microsoft and Citrix. Way too cool!

Check it out at http://drive2006.blogspot.com.

Cheers!

Hey guys,

As you probably know Brian is having the first BriForum in Europe in October. Papers/ideas must be submitted  by July, 31st and I have a couple ideas in mind. But I am open to suggestions of course. Considering I always try to talk about no-Citrix stuff, what do you guys think it would be cool to see at BriForum Germany? Keep in mind the no-Citrix idea. Email me please your thoughts on this.

Cheers,

Hey guys,

Microsoft is hosting a webcast today about the new Terminal Services features available on Windows ‘Longhorn’ Server. If you are not familiar with what is coming up, this is a good chance to check it out.

It is scheduled for today, June, 22nd at 1:00PM PST (4:00PM EST).

You can register for it here.

Just a quick note for all you guys out there. TSFactory, my new venture into the TS development world is now up and running. I just need to change a couple things on the website (still waiting for the web developers…) and the phone system. So bear with me.

RecordTS is on track for a July launch and promises to be the next big thing on the TS industry. The ability to record everything your users and administrators are doing on their terminal servers or any other machine being accessed using the Microsoft RDP client is simply awesome, especially nowadays where every single company is really worried about auditing policies and procedures. So here we go.

The old Terminal-Services.NET forums are finally up. All the old content (technical discussions) is there and of course the new forums for the upcoming products are available as well. It should be up and running at http://forums.tsfactory.ca.

Cheers!

I will be probably writing a couple articles about the features we can now see on Windows ‘Longhorn’ Server BETA 2 (a public beta by the way). After installing it yesterday, I played with the Terminal Services Gateway part (the RDP over HTTPS thing) and I think there is something wrong.

That is why I am asking myself this morning, ‘Am I the only one that thinks TS Gateway sucks?’. I will explain why. As Citrix and other companies like Provision Networks are more focused on getting the medium (not Citrix) and large companies out there using their products, we, mere mortals working on two-server shops out there or even the medium shop with a buch of TSs, would expect Microsoft to focus their efforts on us.

After playing with the Gateway all I can say is it works. But it is a major PITA to deploy. Something that should be as simple as the 2X LoadBalancer (to me, the most simple HTTPS gateway out there - no wonder I was part of the original team that created such thing ) is now as complicated as the Citrix Access Gateway. Ok, it does all kinds of crap and has all kinds of access policies. Neat. But the small shops do not give a **** about that. They want a point-and-click wizard with no more than 3 screens. Simple as that. But no, the TS team at Microsoft decided to go down the Citrix path.

Great for us TS consultants. I am sure their German approach on the TS Gateway and probably on the web interface (did not play with the latest version yet) will keep us busy for a while.

Bad for the small shops out there that will never figure out what the hell Microsoft was thinking.

I do think they do not have usability brainstorm sessions on the TS team. If they do I am sure they are all on early Mondays when everyone is pissed off, so screw usability.

Ok I do think someone at Microsoft was not on a good mood some day and decided to write a paper to make the world a harder place for everyone else.

Everyone knows how slow TS is on VMWare GSX (now called something else and free AFAIK) or Virtual Server (free too). The overhead is on the 30-40% ballpark. That is a LOT. So your TS will be slow, unless you are doing all this for one single user.

Now take that overhead and put all that on SBS 2003 that is already doing everything else like Exchange, SQL, AD, etc and now you will probably have the slowest TS ever in the face of the earth.

If you do not trust me, go ahead and setup this monstruosity. 

Yes this is finally available to anyone. And now!

Well, sort of.

As I discussed with many people at BriForum, we are working on a tool to record RDP sessions so you can watch/play back later all your user(s) have been doing all day long on your TS!

The software is on its early development stages BUT it is ready to be tested so you can get a ‘preview’ of what to expect when it is released. Right now you need to install it on a separate machine (not your TS) but you can record all sessions going to that TS if you want.

The planned features for the final version are:

- User session recording based on username, time of the day, application that was launched and so on.

- Runs as a service on the terminal server.

- Records to the local drive or any other network location.

- Web interface for the administrators so they can watch what was recorded in Macromedia Flash format!

And much more.

The software will be licensed on a PER SERVER basis and volume discounts and site licenses will be available. The suggested MSRP will be US$ 599 per server (assuming you have 50 users per server this is less than US$ 12 per user!).

This is simply a must have for every single company out there, worried about security and auditing policies compliance.

If you are interested on testing the software, please email us at RecordTS@NOSPAM-TSFactory.ca (remove the NOSPAM-) with some details about your environment size, potential number of servers and if this is a software your company would potentially purchase if it was available today.

Cheers!