Windows Server 2003

Terminal Server Customer Solution

Avanade Lowers the Cost of Providing

Remote Access to Mission-Critical Systems
by Switching to Terminal Servers Based on
Windows .NET Server 2003, Enterprise
Edition Customer Profile
Avanade provides cutting-edge
Published: July 2002 technology services to Global 2000
companies and emerging market-
makers by combining deep technical
knowledge and proven integration
Switching its terminal servers to run on Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, processes with the next-generation
Enterprise Edition enabled Avanade to significantly lower the cost of capabilities of Microsoft enterprise
technology.
providing its worldwide user base with remote access to mission-critical
Business Situation
client/server applications. In addition to saving the company hundreds of Avanade had purchased a third-
thousands of dollars in hardware, third-party add-ons, and support costs, party add-on for Microsoft®
Windows® 2000 Terminal Services
Avanade’s new remote access solution has resulted in an 80-percent to provide users with remote access
to mission-critical systems. The
reduction in administrative overhead, a more seamless end-user company soon found that the add-
experience, and a 99-percent reduction in downtime. on required an excessive amount of
operational overhead, and was far
too costly to provide remote access
to its growing remote user base.

Company Overview Solution

Upgrading its terminal server farm to
Founded in April 2000, Avanade provides cutting-edge technology services to Global 2000 Microsoft Windows Server 2003,
Enterprise Edition enabled Avanade
companies and emerging market-makers by combining deep technical knowledge and proven to reduce costs and administrative
integration processes with the next-generation capabilities of Microsoft enterprise technology. overhead while improving the end-
user experience.
With 1,200 employees in 11 countries, Avanade is a highly distributed organization. The company Benefits
maintains 17 “Development Centers” throughout the United States, Europe, South America, and  An improved end-user
experience
Asia-Pacific, creating value for customers by designing, building, and deploying customized,  At least 50 percent lower
reliable architectures and scalable infrastructures. Avanade also maintains three data centers, hardware costs
 $100K savings in licensing fees
located in Seattle, London, and Singapore.  $117K savings in support costs
 80-percent reduction in
administrative overhead
Situation  Availability increased by “two
nines” (from 99 percent to 99.99
Many of Avanade’s internal systems employ a traditional client/server architecture, relying on a percent)
high-speed local area network (LAN) to access centralized data stores. To provide its global
Software and Services
workforce with access to these systems, Avanade originally used Microsoft® Windows® 2000– Windows .NET Server 2003,
based terminal servers, which allowed application execution to take place on centralized servers Enterprise Edition (Beta 3),
including these technologies:
while all keyboard, mouse, and display information was redirected to remote users via a remote  Terminal Server
protocol. “We had to provide a rich, remote desktop experience for our consultants, who typically  Session Directory

work from client sites,” said Sean Jazayeri, Chief Information Officer at Avanade. “Avanade has a
tremendous amount of intellectual property in our Knowledge Management system, but it does
our consultants little good if they can’t access this information from outside the office.”
Avanade tried to make do with just Windows 2000 Terminal Services and its built-in Remote
Desktop Protocol (RDP 5.0), but Terminal Services lacked some of the required functionality, so "The level of integration
the company purchased a third-party add-on to augment the solution. Administrative overhead for
between Windows Server
the original Windows 2000–based solution was roughly 15 hours per week—not too bad,
considering the functionality it provided. However, when coupled with the third-party add-on, the 2003 and the rest of our
solution became costly. Initial hardware and software costs to support 80 users were $300,000, Windows-based
and the company’s rapid growth meant that 250 users now needed remote access on a daily infrastructure will significantly
basis. “The third-party solution was expensive. We ended up paying for a great deal of
decrease the cost of
functionality that we would never use, but it was the only one that met our needs at the time,” said
Jazayeri. providing users with remote
access to mission-critical
Solution applications."
After evaluating the improved Terminal Server component and RDP 5.1 in Windows Server
Sean Jazayeri
2003, Avanade determined that its needs could be met without the third-party add-on. The
Chief Information Officer
change resulted in lower operational overhead, along with significantly lower hardware, licensing, Avanade
and support costs. Switching its terminal servers to Windows Server 2003 also enhanced the
end-user experience by making remote access more similar to Avanade’s local desktop standard,
which is Windows XP Professional. “The level of integration between Windows Server 2003 and
the rest of our Windows-based infrastructure will significantly decrease the cost of providing users
with remote access to mission-critical applications,” said Jazayeri. “Combined with the cost
savings it provided, the decision to switch was a simple one.”

Building on the Terminal Services technology in Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003
provides a number of new and improved capabilities to the RDP and Terminal Server
components that are increasing productivity for both end users and Avanade’s information
technology (IT) staff:

Enhanced Resource Redirection

With RDP 5.1 in Windows Server 2003, all client drives can be mounted inside the server session
and over the same connection, giving users the ability to seamlessly transfer files between local
and server-based drives. All printers installed on the client—including those on the user’s local
network—can also be made available, and are now identified with user-friendly names rather
than cryptic paths. Serial ports and even smart cards on the user’s local machine can also be
mounted to the server, providing maximum flexibility in using peripheral devices attached to the
desktop. “The resource redirection capabilities of RDP 5.1 are fantastic—because the data
transfer is so reliable and efficient, users can be much more productive,” said Jim Bricker, a
Systems Engineer at Avanade. “Additionally, users can log on via their smart card, which enables
increased assurance of their logon identity.”

Integration with Active Directory Services

To enhance manageability of Windows Server 2003–based terminal servers, a number of new
administrative features are also provided. Most Terminal Server–specific settings are
configurable through Microsoft Active Directory directory service Group Policies, so Avanade can
®

now use Active Directory Organizational Units to manage its terminal server farm as a single
logical service. Also, Windows Server 2003 includes a comprehensive Terminal Services
Windows Management Interface (WMI) provider, allowing for scripted configuration and querying
of all the settings on its terminal servers.
Manageability is further enhanced via an Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI) provider,
which delivers programmatic access to per-user Terminal Server profile settings such as Home "It’s so much easier to
Directory, Remote Control permissions, and so on. “It’s so much easier to manage our terminal
manage our terminal server
server environment using Windows Server 2003 as the underlying operating system, with or
without third-party add-ons,” said Bricker. environment using Windows
Server 2003 as the
Load-balancing and Session Management
underlying operating system,
Although Microsoft provides Network Load Balancing with the Windows Server platform, for
Avanade it was important that the company could utilize its existing load-balancing hardware. The with or without third-party
new Session Directory feature in Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition provides critical add-ons."
support for Network Load Balancing as well as third-party load balancing solutions, providing a
transparent mechanism for users to reliably reconnect to their existing sessions within the Jim Bricker
Systems Engineer
terminal server farm. Avanade

Session Directory enabled Avanade to integrate its F5 BIG-IP load balancer to create farms of
terminal servers that appear to users as a single machine. Using this approach, Avanade can
easily accommodate rapid demand by simply adding another server to the farm without having to
make any changes to end-user settings to re-balance the load. “Windows Server 2003 is very
cluster-friendly—Session Directory allows us to use the load balancer of our choice, rather than
being forced to use any particular proprietary solution,” said Bricker.

Avanade is using Session Directory together with the reverse port translation capabilities of its F5
load balancer to maximize the freedom provided to consultants working at customer locations.
“We use reverse port translation to shift traffic from port 443—the SSL port typically open in a
customer’s firewall—to port 3389, which is used by RDP 5.1,” explained Bricker. “With the help of
F5’s Session Directory support in BIG-IP, our consultants can now connect to our terminal server
farm via our BIG-IP through most firewalls, and the Session Directory feature will ensure they are
reconnected to their existing session in the farm.”

An Improved End-User Experience

Users running Windows XP Professional, Avanade’s corporate standard, enjoy a similar interface
whether working locally, connecting to mission-critical applications running on a terminal server,
or accessing their work machines via the Remote Desktop feature in Windows XP Professional.
Remote sessions are full-screen and high-color by default, Windows keys like ‘ALT-TAB’ can be
recognized by the server, and even audio and system sounds such as notifications and warnings
can be redirected to the client from the server.

To improve performance over lower-bandwidth connections, aspects of the remote session such
as wallpaper and desktop themes can be dynamically stripped away based on the connection
speed that the user indicates using the Experience tab of Remote Desktop Connection (RDC),
which is the successor to the RDP 5.0 Terminal Services client. “Everything the user needs is
built into RDC,” said Bricker. “Users will be more satisfied and productive, as they can use the
same tool to connect to their own PC via Remote Desktop or to a terminal server in our data
center. Their remote sessions can be almost identical to their standard desktop experience, but
they can determine to what extent, depending on the available bandwidth.”

Tradeoffs
Although Terminal Services and RDP 5.1 in Windows Server 2003 don’t yet provide some
features of the third-party solution, Bricker feels that the cost savings more than justifies the
tradeoffs. “Our users are all aware that they are accessing applications remotely, and don’t mind
working within a single window for all remotely-driven applications,” Bricker said. “Rather than "Before upgrading, we were
publishing applications individually, we group applications together in a logical manner under the
experiencing about 40 help-
Start menu—by Finance, HR, and so on—and set the directory and file permissions on the server
appropriately. In fact, many people prefer running applications remotely, because they desk calls per week … We’re
experience better performance, even if the application is also installed locally. The terminal now down to 10 calls per
servers are hosted at our data centers along with our other servers, so a remotely-running week, even though our
application that needs to access a large amount of data never has to go outside the data center
remote user base has more
to get it. If the user were running the application locally, it would have to pull all of the data from
the data center to their PC over our VPN, which is generally slower.” than tripled. Assuming each
support call costs us $25,
Benefits that’s a savings of $117,000
Selecting Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services as its new standard for remote access to per year."
mission-critical enterprise applications will provide Avanade with several meaningful benefits,
including significantly lower hardware and licensing costs. “Based on what we’ve seen so far, Sean Jazayeri
Chief Information Officer
each dual-processor terminal server can support at least twice as many users as before,” said Avanade
Jazayeri. “Our hardware footprint has been reduced by 25 percent even though our user base
has tripled. In addition, we no longer need to purchase licenses for the third-party solution. This
alone is saving us close to $100,000 per year.”

Switching to terminal servers running Windows .NET Server 2003, Enterprise Edition will also
provide Avanade with a significant reduction in support costs. “Before upgrading, we were
experiencing about 40 help-desk calls per week, with topics ranging from installation of the third-
party client to how printers were handled, or an inability to gain access through a customer’s
firewall,” said Jazayeri. “We’re now down to 10 calls per week, even though our remote user base
has more than tripled. Assuming each support call costs us $25, that’s a savings of $117,000 per
year. Because users are experiencing fewer problems and therefore less downtime, we’re also
eliminating the hidden costs associated with lost productivity.”

Avanade will also incur significantly lower administrative costs. “With terminal servers based on
Windows Server 2003, fewer cycles will need to be devoted to maintenance and troubleshooting,”
said Jazayeri. “It used to take one systems engineer two or three hours per day to administer our
old solution—a burden that has been reduced to two or three hours per week at the most. We
already know how to administer Windows-based servers, and can manage the added terminal
server functionality provided by Windows Server 2003 with very little additional effort, because it’s
so well-integrated.”

In addition to integration with Active Directory, integration with Microsoft Operations Manager
(MOM) is making it easier for Avanade to proactively monitor and administer its terminal servers,
leading to a higher level of availability for end users. “MOM comes with built-in Terminal Services
alerts, so we can proactively monitor our systems and address any issues before they affect
users,” said Bricker. “Compared to our old solution, the increased reliability and ease of
troubleshooting provided by Windows Server 2003 has enabled us to go from 99- to 99.9-percent
availability. Add in the clustering and load balancing capabilities we now enjoy, and we’re able to
deliver 99.99-percent availability—less than an hour of downtime per year.”
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 enables you to create a highly productive platform for powering
connected applications, networks, and Web services. Windows Server 2003:
 Enables you to deliver a reliable, secure, scalable platform for applications and network
services
 Makes it easy for you to deploy, manage, and use
 Empowers you with a complete server platform to quickly build connected solutions
 Enables you to maximize business value by leveraging the largest partner solution
ecosystem
For more information about Windows Server 2003, please visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/

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