Terminal Services Renamed and Updated

The Terminal Services role and components in Windows Server 2008 R2 are being renamed Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and will include both Microsoft’s virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI) and Terminal Services. VDI allows desktop workloads, including the OS, application, and user data, to be hosted in a data center on VMs or racked blade PCs. Terminal Services allow remote users to interact with centralized desktops and applications running on a server. Although both methods provide centralized desktop management, organizations need to determine all the resources, such as management servers, they will need to manage the centralized desktops.

New Names, Centralized Desktops

Terminal Services provides shared desktops and applications based on sessions running on the Windows Server OS, where one desktop session is created for each user accessing the server simultaneously. Initially Terminal Services was designed to allow users to access server-based applications and desktops from thin-client terminals (without local hard drives, often running a specialized OS such as Windows CE) and from desktop or laptop computers. While thin-client terminals are still commonly used, more and more users access Terminal Services from a computer running a full OS, such as Mac OS X, Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. Whether a thin-client or full PC, the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is used to initiate a connection to and interact with the server.