by Greg Shields

Another architectural decision that you’ll need to make when deploying your first Terminal Servers is whether to make use of Windows Server 2008′s new RemoteApp features. I’ve already talked about RemoteApps throughout this series, but remember that a RemoteApp is functionally the idea of deploying an individual application to a user rather than an entire desktop.

Terminal Services has traditionally had an exclusive focus on full desktops, leaving the deployment of individual “seamless” applications to its bigger brother Citrix XenApp. But with Windows Server 2008, the differentiations evaporate between the two products in this arena. First and foremost, RemoteApps are an excellent new feature for Terminal Services. The fact that they enable you to remove the traditional desktop boundaries means better security for your servers as well as more predictable performance utilization because users are more limited in the things they can do.

Yet at the same time, the addition of RemoteApps adds a layer of complexity to how you’ll enable application access to your users. Simply put, do you give them a full desktop or just the RemoteApp? The answer isn’t as easy as you’d think.

First, let’s consider some of the pros and cons of traditional desktops:

• PRO: Desktops are familiar to users. They have a recognizable start bar, desktop, icon access, app launch procedure.
• PRO: Users can connect to all their applications through a single connection to a single desktop.
• PRO: Users have easy access to all needed applications and can use them whenever they want.
• CON: Users have easy access to all needed applications, and will use them (as well as other applications they should really be running locally).
• CON: Documents on remote desktop are not easily accessible on local desktop; it is hard to transfer documents from remote to local desktop.
• CON: Users must connect to their remote desktop to start applications. This is a change to their usual launch procedure.

As you can see, there are some obvious reasons desktops work and why they’re also more problematic for you the administrator. With this in mind, let’s now look at the pros and cons of RemoteApps:

• PRO: Applications appear to run locally. There exists a seamless boundary between a remote application and a local desktop. Users don’t have to care whether their apps are local or remote.
• PRO: Applications can be instantiated by double-clicking a document on the desktop.
• PRO: RemoteApps tend to use fewer and/or more predictable levels of resources. This is the case because the entire explorer.exe shell isn’t loaded, reducing user touch points as well as overall memory consumption.
• CON: Users may have multiple paths to access applications. Some applications may require TS Web Access. Some applications might work with document double-click.
• CON: Finding documents on local desktops is not immediately obvious. If users are working with RemoteApps, the seamlessness may make it difficult for them to find their documents.
• CON: Users may be used to “remote desktops.” RemoteApps change their launch procedures.

Your decision about whether to use remote desktops or RemoteApps will depend much on your individual needs. Your users may require desktops so that they can accomplish their tasks, or the training to shift them to the new RemoteApp concept may be too challenging. No solution is better than the other, and combinations of the two are common.

About the Author

Greg Shields is an independent author, speaker, and IT consultant, as well as a Partner and Principal Technologist with Concentrated Technology. With 15 years in information technology, Greg has developed extensive experience in systems administration, engineering, and architecture specializing in Microsoft OS, remote application, systems management, and virtualization technologies. He is a Contributing Editor and columnist for TechNet Magazine and Redmond Magazine, and serves as the Series Editor for Realtime Publishers, the world’s leading provider of high-quality content for the IT market. Greg is a highly sought-after and top-ranked speaker for both live and recorded events, and is seen regularly at conferences like TechMentor Events, Microsoft Tech Ed, VMworld, and more. He is a multiple recipient of Microsoft “Most Valuable Professional” award.