Plan to deploy Office 2010 in a Remote Desktop Services environment

Server requirements

You can run Office 2010 on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2. You cannot install or run Office 2010 on a server operating system that was released earlier than Windows Server 2003.

Deploying Office 2010 on Remote Desktop Services requires a review of the design changes in Office 2010, and a review of the server requirements, depending on the version of Windows Server (2003 or 2008) that you intend to use. Because the current server hardware can support multiple concurrent sessions, performance may be greatly affected. Processor and memory requirements vary, depending on the workload. The following table shows the results of some recent tests.

You can configure Remote Desktop Services to load balance on a Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host) server farm if your customers need that functionality.

As Windows Server 2003 RD Session Host server capacity and scaling shows, the number of concurrent sessions depends on many factors, such as workload and configuration. To support thousands of concurrent sessions, you should use an RD Session Host server farm configuration.

To assist you in planning your server requirements, see the following:

• To view the Windows Server 2008 Tuning Guide, which now has a reference for general training of RD Session Host server knowledge worker workload (the Office-based workload) on Windows Server 2008, see Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008 (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=135703).

• To learn how Microsoft IT deployed Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services at Microsoft, see How MSIT uses Terminal Services as a Scalable Remote Access Solution (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=135705).

• To learn more about the Remote Desktop Load Simulation Toolset, see Remote Desktop Load Simulation Tools (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=178956).

Client requirements

One advantage of running Office 2010 on a Remote Desktop Services-enabled computer is that older, less robust client computers can access the Remote Desktop Services-enabled computer. Specifically, any computer that supports the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) can connect to a Remote Desktop Services-enabled computer.

Capacity planning in Windows Server 2008 R2

The following paper, Remote Desktop Session Host Capacity Planning in Windows Server 2008 R2 (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=185079\&clcid=0x409), is available for download. It guides you on capacity planning of RD Session Host in Windows Server 2008 R2. The paper describes the most relevant factors that influence the capacity of a given deployment.

Running Outlook in Online Mode

For Microsoft Outlook 2010, the most scalable and optimized configuration for large deployments is Outlook running in Online Mode against the Exchange Server. However, Customers who deploy Outlook 2010 now have the supported option of enabling Cached Exchange Mode when Outlook 2010 is installed in a Remote Desktop environment. This may be ideal for small deployments where Outlook is connecting over a high latency connection to an Exchange Server that is located remotely. For more information, see Cached Exchange Mode in a Remote Desktop Session Host environment: planning considerations (Outlook 2010) (white paper).

Single point of failure

To get fault-tolerance and availability, deploy a load-balanced RD Session Host farm. If a server fails, the other members of the RD Session Host farm will get the user load. However, users who previously had a connection to the failed server must log on to their desktops and start their applications again. A Remote Desktop Connection Broker (RD Connection Broker) must be installed to keep track of user sessions in a load-balanced RD Session Host farm. RD Connection Broker will track the number of user sessions on each RD Session Host server in the farm, and direct new sessions to the RD Session Host server that has the fewest sessions.