Bandwidth & memory requirements for Server 2003 Terminal Services hosting?

M

minc3d

Gawd
Joined
Nov 27, 2004
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Hey experts,

I have a customer that is moving from a decentralized (netbook for each user, connecting over VPN) to a centralized Terminal Services approach (using Surface tablets to access a 2003 RDP server) for all of his sales staff.

There will be about 13-16 users who will be ditching netbooks and desktop PCs in exchange for exclusively connecting to their work desktops over 2003 RDP sessions from Surface tablets (and other Windows PCs).

They have two offices. The server will be at one location where about 75% of the users are housed, and the second location will be setup over point to point VPN to transmit traffic for pertinent needs. Their phone system (PBX for one location, with VOIP being used at the other office) is housed at one location with phone traffic being passed over a point to point to the other office.

The users who will be RDP'ing into the server will be using Office (Word/Excel) and 1-2 users may be using Quickbooks Enterprise as well. Internet browsing will also be likely done on a smaller scale.

I have not done such a large scale RDP setup for an office, and am curious about the following:

* What kind of cable internet connection would you recommend for each location? We are pretty much locked into going with Comcast Cable for this, and our choices are either 16/3, 27/7, 50/10, or 100/10. (Note: First number is down speed, second is up speed).

* The server we are planning on loading RDP services onto is a Dell Poweredge 2900 with a single Intel Xeon E5405 with 8GB of RAM, running Server 2003 R2 X64. I know the OS is not ideal, but we are budget constrained with other needs right now. I was considering upgrading the server with a second same-model processor, and adding another 8GB of RAM to bring it to 16GB. Would this be sufficient to allow for 13-16 users all possibly at the same time?

* How much memory and bandwidth would you recommend per RDP user? I want to ensure I don't overkill the server with too much memory, but don't want to undercut it either. Also, we want to obviously go with the internet line plan that is sufficient for each site, without going overboard.

Any insight from others who have setup similar scenarios would be nice. Thanks in advance!
 
Your disk I/O will hurt you more than that CPU but if they are going to be doing web browsing or outlook on it...have fun lol.

Also I'd pull a faster chip off ebay like an E5462 which is 2.8 vs the 2ghz yours currently has (I checked and they are $30 ea right now).

Assuming you've got a perc5/i in there like other 2900s I've worked on, I'd get a few 300GB 10k SAS disks and RAID10 them.
 
So 4 employees in the remote office? If I recall properly, RDP sessions use up to 90Kbit/sec of bandwidth, depending on the video settings you use & the app that is in use [source].

VoIP traffic is up to 90Kbit/sec depending on the codec used [source]

So let's just assume worst case scenario, all 4 employees with active RDP sessions each using 90Kbit of bandwidth + all 4 employees on their VoIP phones using G.711 codec at 90Kbit/sec traffic.
So theoretically you should need 720Kbit of upload speed at the minimum at your main office. Bump to a meg to be safe. So any of those speed packages Comcast offers ought to be more than sufficient.

I'll let others provide input on server cpu/memory/IO disk requirements.
 
Remote office actually will have more users, about 8-12. The main office where the server is will have about 3-5 users. Thank you for the bandwidth insight, it's definitely helpful!
 
FYI, I moved to RDP v8 and I find it a LOT more usable than older versions. It's more efficient in general, and I also set some options to allow it to lower the quality a bit instead of becoming unresponsive to input, like if you browse to a website with animated GIFs or Flash or whatever. I think it's worth upgrading that 2003 server to something newer when you can. I know you say you're budget limited, but it would really be an improvement IMO, especially if you have to deal with a crappy upstream. However, RDP v8 is still a piece of crap overall. Until Microsoft can figure out how to prioritize mouse/keyboard over video (especially over animated video) then RDP sucks. And the settings I use for v8 to allow it to lower the quality actually makes it lower the quality quite a LOT more than I feel it should. But it's still better than the old version. On the old version, if I inadvertently loaded a page with Flash, it could literally take 30-60 seconds for me to get RDP to recognize my mouse/KB input to close the tab, even with a 5Mbps connection. (Also, web devs, animations on web pages are unacceptable in general. No, it doesn't make your stuff look cooler. All it does is slow things down and annoy users. If not absolutely necessary to have animation on your site, then you should not have ANY animation on your site.)

I don't agree with the 720Kbps upstream requirement. I'd say 2Mbps upstream bare minimum, and even more would be better. RDP usually isn't using a lot of bandwidth if you're not looking at graphically intensive stuff, but it can spike. If someone browses to a website with animated content, it can bring things to a crawl, especially on older RDP versions, as mentioned above.

I do think 16GB RAM would be a good upgrade, and I do also agree that you should have a decent storage setup that can do random reads somewhat fast (obviously SSDs would be ideal but good SAS drives will do). I do not think the CPU will be a big issue, but if the upgrade isn't too costly then it can't hurt.
 
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I fully plan on recommending Comcast 27/7 plans for each of their offices, so I think moving from current T1 (1.54Mbps) is going to be night and day.
 
Alot depends on how heavy the usage is, but I have a customer with 8 users, TS down a VPN with VoIP, all on 896 up, no sweat. 10Mb is the nominal down, usually somewhere around 7 Mb and not even using all of that. I would have no problem recommending the 16/3 plan. At the very least, start on 16/3, then upgrade if necessary- usually you can get spiffs for bumping up speed.
I would seriously recommend that you sit down with your customer and discuss an upgrade plan to 2k8R2 MINIMUM, Server2012 would be ideal. Server2k3 without R2 is just irresponsible, if not just making things harder on you. They are backwards in spending the cash on flash instead of infrastructure at this point. I'm all for their plan if they had 2k8r2 or better- I actually have a customer buying a couple SurfaceRT tablets to use with existing TS- but they are backwards on their priorities- especially if they are becoming more reliant on TS.
If money really is the issue (I find it hard to believe if they are dumping existing (working?) devices for new) talk to Microsoft Financing. If you are a Microsoft Partner, you can submit a deal for financing. If you are not a partner, either sign up or find one.

The 2900 has as many as 12 3.5" drives- even loading up on 7200RPM drives in RAID10 will offer a serious performance improvement. Are you using 2k3 64-bit? If not, the memory question gets alot murkier, but you should be OK for smaller TS sessions.
 
Im actually formulating my proposal to move the server to 2012 Standard x64, with 16GB of RAM and dual Xeon processors.

I think this is a smart move.
 
Meh. 4 cores is more than enough for your plans, along with 8 GB. I'd spend the money on a fast drive array. Your specs make sense if you plan on virtualizing, but you would still need a fast drive array. Server 2012 is plug and play on the 2900.
 
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