Microsoft Techdays 2010 - Day 2

A big surprise at Techdays 2010 was Microsoft promoting Terminal Server as part of their virtualisation strategy. The technology was most prominent towards the end of the 1990s with Citrix leading the way. The idea is to have a thin client on your PC to access applications that run on a powerful central server, more or less like a mainframe and a terminal. Although terminal server never went away, indeed is has been integrated into Windows Server since the 2000 edition, it was never quite as successful as expected. A variant of course is used as the principle remote administration method for Windows Server products.

Back in the 90s using Citrix or Terminal Server would normally have been for performance reasons allowing low specification clients to access resource hungry applications even over poor network links. It of course makes perfect sense to use this technology for security as you can run applications that pose a risk to the PC, (e.g. anything that requires IE6) in an isolated locked down session. The reverse is true as well. For example, you could run a sensitive application in a terminal session and reduce the risk of damage if the end PC is infected with malware.

After a couple of sessions on IIS 7, I do wonder if Microsoft have made a mistake here. On the surface, it looks great, but even a couple of the experienced Microsoft IIS7 support team seemed to have trouble getting it do what they wanted. Their frequent use of IISRESET after an unexpected error did not inspire confidence.