Terminal Services Renamed and Updated

In Windows Server 2008 R2 Terminal Services is being renamed Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and will enable virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI), which allows desktop workloads to be hosted in a data center on virtual machines (VMs) or racked blade PCs. The renamed Terminal Services helps centralize desktops to reduce ongoing costs, but organizations will need to marshal other resources, such as management servers, 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.