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Overview of TS Session Broker

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2008

TS Session Broker is a role service that provides the following functionality:

  • Allows a user to reconnect to their existing session in a load-balanced terminal server farm.

  • Enables you to evenly distribute the session load between servers in a load-balanced terminal server farm.

TS Session Broker stores session state information that includes session IDs, their associated user names, and the name of the server where each session resides.

If a user disconnects from a session (whether intentionally or because of a network failure), their applications will continue to run. When they reconnect, TS Session Broker is queried to determine whether they have an existing session, and if so, on which server in the farm. If there is an existing session, TS Session Broker redirects the client to the terminal server where their session exists.

With TS Session Broker Load Balancing, when a user without an existing session connects to a terminal server in the load-balanced farm, the user will be redirected to the terminal server with the fewest sessions. (To distribute the session load between more powerful and less powerful servers in the farm, you can assign a relative server weight value to a server.) If a user with an existing session reconnects, they are redirected to the terminal server where their existing session resides.

TS Session Broker components

There are two TS Session Broker components to consider.

  • TS Session Broker server. This is the server that runs the Terminal Services Session Broker service and tracks user sessions for one or more load-balanced terminal server farms. TS Session Broker uses a farm name to determine which servers are in the same terminal server farm.

  • Terminal servers that use TS Session Broker. These are load-balanced terminal servers that are members of a farm in TS Session Broker. To participate in TS Session Broker, a server must meet the following criteria:

    • The server must have the Terminal Server role service installed.

    • The server must be a member of an Active Directory domain.

    • The server must be a member of a load-balanced terminal server farm.

      If you are using the TS Session Broker Load Balancing feature, you can configure load-balancing settings together with other TS Session Broker settings. For more information, see Checklist: Create a Load-Balanced Terminal Server Farm by Using TS Session Broker.

Important

To use TS Session Broker Load Balancing, all terminal servers in the farm must be running Windows Server 2008. 

  - The server must be a member of the Session Directory Computers local group on the TS Session Broker server.  
      
  - The server must be joined to a farm in TS Session Broker.

Additional references