Load balancing Microsoft Terminal Services
About Microsoft Terminal Services
Microsoft Terminal Services, a precursor to Microsoft Remote Desktop Services or ‘RDS’, allows users to remotely access a graphical desktop and associated applications running on a terminal services server.
Key benefits of load balancing
Here are a few key benefits:
- Ensures the application is always available
- Provides a stable, optimal performance
- Ability to isolate servers which reduces risk when performing upgrades/maintenance
- Scalability
Microsoft’s Enterprise solutions are at the heart of businesses everywhere. Loadbalancer.org is officially certified for all of Microsoft’s key applications which you can find here. More details on the Terminal Services components, how it works, and prerequisites for load balancing can be found in our deployment guide, available to view below.
How to load balance Microsoft Terminal Services
Server CPU and RAM usage can inform load balancing decisions with the use of our open source Windows feedback agent. A small number of users performing computationally or memory intensive tasks can quickly consume a server’s resources. Our feedback agent reports server resource use to the load balancer, allowing for server weights to be dynamically changed so that busy servers receive either fewer or no new connections.
Microsoft Terminal Services existed up until Windows Server 2008 R2, when Microsoft changed the nomenclature. For reference and comparison with Remote Desktop Services, details of how the naming of components changed can be found here.
Example deployment showing load balanced Terminal Servers.
Protocols and load balancing methods for Microsoft Terminal Services
| Protocol | Role | Default Ports | Supported load balancing methods |
| TCP | Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) | 3389 | Layer 4 DR, Layer 4 NAT and Layer 7 SNAT |
deployment guide
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