Is Vista a Terminal Server ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rafa J.
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Rafa J.

Hi

I playing a little with vista 5308, and it's behavior looks like the
operative system is not running a full console session, but looks like a
terminal session, so giving the security of this approach on a server.

Could someone give a little of more technical informacion about it or i'm
completly lost ?

thanks

Rafa J.
 
"Longhorn" Server has the capability to be a terminal server, but how it is
at the moment in the Feb. CTP it's a bit crap to be honest, but eventually
in later builds it should be at a better standard than Windows Server 2003
R2 :o)

We've got a "Longhorn" Server attached to our WS03 R2 domain controller at
home, but we only use it as a file server as the rest of the
functionality... is... hmm... lacking somewhat :op

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.
All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not of my
employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared that up!


--- Original message follows ---
 
Is Vista "a terminal server" in the same way that Server 2003 can be
"a terminal server"? No. I agree with Andre in that regard.

But just like Windows XP, Vista is supporting multiple "concurrent"
user sessions and a single remote terminal session. All of which are
supported by the same code that makes these things possible on
terminal servers.

What _is_ new to Vista and is "even more like a terminal server" is
that the interactive console session now runs in "session 1" rather
than session zero. This was part of the service hardening, so that
only services would be running in session zero. This change doesn't
impact "what rights do I have" though. There are some subtle
differences due to this change, but nothing terminal service-aware
applications haven't been dealing with since Windows 2000 and NT 4.0
SP4.

That you mention "security" makes me think the main thing you're
noticing is actually Vista's User Account Protection (UAP), which
isn't related to terminal services or "being like a terminal server"
at all. UAP effectively strips you of your Administrators membership,
such that by default every process you start is running as a "standard
user" with only limited rights. To actually run a process with the
rights provided by your Administrators group membership, by default
under Vista you have to explicitly run the process using "Run as
Administrator" and then confirm an interactive prompt that you want
the process to be allowed to run with elevated rights.

You can search msdn.microsoft.com for information on Vista and UAP.

Rafa J. said:
Hi

I playing a little with vista 5308, and it's behavior looks like the
operative system is not running a full console session, but looks like a
terminal session, so giving the security of this approach on a server.

Could someone give a little of more technical informacion about it or i'm
completly lost ?

thanks

Rafa J.
Click to expand...

Alan Adams
 
Thanks Alan

That was what I meant



Alan Adams said:
Is Vista "a terminal server" in the same way that Server 2003 can be
"a terminal server"? No. I agree with Andre in that regard.

But just like Windows XP, Vista is supporting multiple "concurrent"
user sessions and a single remote terminal session. All of which are
supported by the same code that makes these things possible on
terminal servers.

What _is_ new to Vista and is "even more like a terminal server" is
that the interactive console session now runs in "session 1" rather
than session zero. This was part of the service hardening, so that
only services would be running in session zero. This change doesn't
impact "what rights do I have" though. There are some subtle
differences due to this change, but nothing terminal service-aware
applications haven't been dealing with since Windows 2000 and NT 4.0
SP4.

That you mention "security" makes me think the main thing you're
noticing is actually Vista's User Account Protection (UAP), which
isn't related to terminal services or "being like a terminal server"
at all. UAP effectively strips you of your Administrators membership,
such that by default every process you start is running as a "standard
user" with only limited rights. To actually run a process with the
rights provided by your Administrators group membership, by default
under Vista you have to explicitly run the process using "Run as
Administrator" and then confirm an interactive prompt that you want
the process to be allowed to run with elevated rights.

You can search msdn.microsoft.com for information on Vista and UAP.



Alan Adams
Click to expand...
 
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