Windows 7 - Strategy to Remote Desktop multiple users simultanously

Asked By Rahul

02-Feb-10 01:34 PM

I have a about 10 quite old WinXP PC's whose owners now moved offsite but
still access documents and applications remotely using Remote Desktop (RDP)
from their Laptops. Pretty infrequent access. I wanted to consolidate all
this data on a single server where each person could now login using RDP.
What's the best solution? Unfortunaltely WinXP wont allow multiple users to
login at the same time.

What server type should I be looking at? I have max 10 users and not more
than 3 RDP at the same time.

I installed Win Small Business Server but could only RDP to it as admin.
User account RDP always failed for lack of sufficient privilages. After
lots of debugging I suspect that Win SBS is wrong for me. It does too many
other things: e.g. runs IIS, dhcp, and other stuff. I believe it set itself
as a Domain Controller too.

What seems the best way to go? Is Win Home Server going to do what I need ,
maybe? Unfortunately I cannot find a spec. on how many simultanous RDP users
it supports. What'd be nice is a server that is an end in itself. A lot of
SBS stuff looks like a gateway to other PCs.

I am only used to doing Remote Dsktop; but SBS seemed to be trying to do
VLAN's, Remote Services and  a bunch of stuff I am doubtful I need.

--
Rahul

04-Feb-10 04:24 PM

You want some sort of Terminal Server is you are going to be using RDP.

There are other solutions such as VPN.

07-Feb-10 04:29 AM

The proper answer is a terminal server, but licensing is costly and it is
fairly complex to set-up.

Other option might be a virtual-machine host with three copies of XP
running. This way you might be able to re-use your existing XP licences,
depending on licence type. A reasonable spec processor (say dualcore 3GHz or
better) will support 3-5 virtual machines at acceptable speed for most
purposes.

Options for a host are Linux or Windows (XP or standard server) running
VMWare Server (Free) or VMWare ESX on bare metal. Or VirtualBox. Microsoft's
Virtual PC is useable, and easier to set-up, but its performance falls-off
rapidly if you launch multiple VM's. I find that VMWare Server 1.x is still
hard to beat for performance.

Unfortunately SBS is not ideal for this kind of setup, you want a host with
the bare minimum of overheads.