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Free Terminal Server Load Balancing Solution Released

Sunday, 04 March 2007 by Michel Roth

Warren Simondson of Ctrl-Alt-Del IT Consultancy just dropped me a line in which he announced another cool new tool. Well, this is more of a program than a "tool". He has released TSLoadBal Client Edition, a Load Balancing solution for Terminal Servers in a single domain. Let´s hope that this is more of a success than other free RDP Load Balancers. I will give it a go as soon as I get a chance.

The first release is a Terminal Server Client extension that allows load balancing of Terminal Servers in a single Domain. The process balances sessions across a farm of terminal servers within a domain, applying a user load criteria to distribute the sessions evenly. This program also reconnects a client to a disconnected session based on computer name only. A TSLoadBal - Server Edition will be available soon, that will provide a central database for load balancing. The current client version calculates load balancing from the client end. Release 1.0 includes the following features:

• Basic Load balancing among Terminal Services in a single domain
• Administrative server selection to create Server farm
• User load balancing Criteria to distribute sessions evenly
• Reconnect a Disconnected session in the TS Server farm (reconnects based on Computer name only).

This addon requires the Microsoft Terminal Server Client to be installed on the operating machine. The Microsoft Terminal Server Client (MSTSC.EXE ) must be located in %systemroot%\system32 of the client machine. This addon is currently only designed for clients running Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP (All Versions) and Windows Vista. A Windows 98 version is also in development, a linux edition may also be release, depending on user interest.

How TSLoadBal Client Edition works:

1. The TsLoadBal Client works on a simple principle.
2. The client is launched.
3. The client Enumerates the list of Terminal Servers in the Current Domain.
4. The client checks the Terminal Server farm list as compiled by the user or administrator. All settings are stored in CURRENT_USER registry key.
5. The client checks to see if the server farm has a disconnected session that matches the computer name of the current machine running the program. If a session exists, the Microsoft Terminal Server Client native to the OS is launched with the server information predefined.
6. The client checks to see which server has the least load based on user sessions.
7. The client launches the Microsoft Terminal Server Client native to the OS with the server information predefined.

More information here.