Terminal Server Session Broker
Friday, 29 February 2008 by Michel Roth
Almost a year ago I provided a quite popular into insight the (back then) new Session Broker Load Balancing in Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services. Today, the Enterprise Platforms Windows Server Performance Team they dive somewhat deeper into the Session Broker Load Balancing.

Two atwo articles on the subject of Session Broker Load Balancing are definitely worth reading. In fact, this is the best reference so far that provides some insight into the inner workings of Session Broker Load Balancing. I already knew this by poking around but it's always nice to have Microsoft itself confirm this kind of stuff. Some highlights:

  • The Session Broker stores session state information in a Jet database: %systemroot%\system32\tssesdir\tsesdir.edb
  • Session Broker Load Balancing has built-in black hole protection (logon throttling) and a max-session count.
  • The HKLM\System\CurrentControlsSet\Control\Terminal Server\UserSessionLimit value in the registry controls the maximum number of sessions you want to allow to a Terminal Server.
  • Session Broker Logging: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tssdis\Parameters\TraceOutputMode
    • 0: No Output
    • 1: Output to Debugger
    • 2: Output to command window.  This option only applies when starting TSSDIS.EXE using the -debug switch for debugging
    • 3: Output to log file.  When the value is set to 3, the Session Broker log file, tssdis.log is created
Especially the Session Broker Logging is cool. This would allow for "easy" logging to determine when which user logged onto which server. Tool creators, start you engines! Read Terminal Server Session Broker Overview and the more detailed Session Broker Load Balancing.

Related Items:

Windows Server 2008 Parallel Session Creation Revisited (3 October 2007)
A Closer Look At Session Broker Load Balancing In Windows Server 2008 (7 June 2007)
Microsoft Announces Session Based Terminal Server Load Balancing In Longhorn (25 April 2007)
Terminal Server Management And Administration (15 February 2008)
Introducing MSTSC /admin (19 December 2007)
A closer look at Session Broker load balancing in Windows Server 2008 (7 July 2007)
Thomas Koetzing Reviews 2X LoadBalancer (22 May 2006)
Longhorn Beta 3 Is Now Available For Download! (26 April 2007)
Session Directory And Load Balancing Using Terminal Server (13 June 2005)
Free Terminal Server Load Balancing Solution Released (4 March 2007)
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