Using terminal services in application mode for remote administration

[Jesse Stengel]

We have a somewhat unique situation where I work in that
we have a rather large number of domain admins (8 total).
Now due to that, we are always fighting over who gets to
use the two provided terminal services connections.
However, as part of our grant, we received 260 TS CALs,
and thus have been thinking of using those to allow more
connections. Problem is, all information I can find
indicates that the terminal server must run in application
mode to do this. Well we don't serve applications off of
the domain controllers; we just want to remotely
administer them with more users. So two questions:

1) Does anyone know of a way to use TS licensing with
remote administration mode so we can have more than 2
connections? I believe this is not possible, but figured
I'd ask all the same.

2) If not, is there any problem with running terminal
services in application mode on a domain controller and
using it for remote administration.

Thanks.

 

[Ivan Leichtling [MSFT]]

Jesse -

Licensing is not applicable in Remote admin mode, it is a mode that
has a hard-coded limit of 2 remote sessions and 1 console session.

TS can be run in App server mode, however, a license server with valid
licenses will be required to allow client connections past its grace
period (120 days in W2K3 and 90 days in W2K).

We have a somewhat unique situation where I work in that
we have a rather large number of domain admins (8 total).
Now due to that, we are always fighting over who gets to
use the two provided terminal services connections.
However, as part of our grant, we received 260 TS CALs,
and thus have been thinking of using those to allow more
connections. Problem is, all information I can find
indicates that the terminal server must run in application
mode to do this. Well we don't serve applications off of
the domain controllers; we just want to remotely
administer them with more users. So two questions:

1) Does anyone know of a way to use TS licensing with
remote administration mode so we can have more than 2
connections? I believe this is not possible, but figured
I'd ask all the same.

2) If not, is there any problem with running terminal
services in application mode on a domain controller and
using it for remote administration.

Thanks.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

 

[Guest]

Yes I know that. My question is: if I move TS over to
application mode, will this create any problems for a
domain controller? We wish to use it merely to allow more
than 2 users to connect for administration. We do not want
the way the server functions to change. Is using
application mode a valid way to do this or will it cause
problems?

 

[ack]

Answer: a terminal server running in application mode
causes no problems running on a domain controller.

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

Just remember to bring up a terminal services licensing
server no more than 90 days after you switch over to
application mode.

-M