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itcroydon

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How can a 'cached remote desktop session' be used, instead of users connecting to a spare PC?

A small office is using Small Business Server 2003 and most of the employees remotely connect to their own PC. They do this by using Small Business Server's remote web workspace feature, which then offers a list of available PC's to control using remote desktops.

However there are now more employees than PC's and ideally it would be useful to have a cached remote desktop session on the server, to avoid purchasing more PC's, which in reality will not be used at all in the office.

Is it possible / viable to use the server itself for remote desktop sessions and if so how can this be best achieved? Presumably Outlook could not be used in this situation for email and users would then need to use \\servername\exchange through Internet Explorer to access email?

Please advise as to the best way forward.
 
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Brian Pierce
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itcroydon

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Are either option available by default in small business server? Also it is possible to establish a VPN connection and then use remote desktops directly on the server; however is this effectively a cached remote desktop session or is this just used really for server administration?
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Which option uses the least bandwidth and if a remote VPN is established to the network, folllowed by a remote desktop connection to the server, how does the server differentiate between an admin based session and a user mode based session?

KCTS: The main considerations are performance and not purchasing extra PC's unless neccessary. Users need access to shared files, email and one or two specialist applications which have the data stored on the server.
It looks as if using terminal services in application mode has been disabled in SBS 2003 and therefore the only way to do this is via a separate server, or by using virtual server 2005.

( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/evaluation/faq/term.mspx )
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