There are also improvements to network scaling. For example, in previous versions of Windows Server, one NIC was associated with a single physical processor. However, with the right network card, Longhorn Server supports scaling NICs and their associated traffic among multiple CPUs -- a feature called receive-side scaling -- permitting much higher amounts of traffic to be received by one NIC on a highly loaded server. This should benefit multiprocessor servers in particular because more scale can be added simply by adding processors or NICs and not by adding entirely new servers.
Changes to terminal services
Network applications are growing in popularity with each passing week. Longhorn Server sees more work in the Terminal Services/Remote Desktop area than might have been expected, and some of the new capabilities are very welcome improvements. Aside from three brand-new features, the team worked on improving the core processes that make Terminal Services tick, including single sign-on to TS sessions, monitor spanning and high-resolution support for sessions, integration with the Windows System Resource Manager to better monitor performance and resource usage, and themes that make TS sessions seamless to the client.
There are three key new features added in the Longhorn Server release. The first is Terminal Services Remote Programs. Like the functionality offered by Citrix MetaFrame years ago, Longhorn Server will support out-of-the-box the ability to define programs to be run directly from a TS-enabled server but be integrated within the local copy of Windows, adding an independent Taskbar button, resizable application window areas, Alt-Tab switching functionality and more.
Users will have no idea that their application is hosted elsewhere, except for the occasional slow response because of network latency or server overload. It's also simple to enable this functionality: administrators create .rdp files, which are text-based profiles of a TS connection that the client reads and uses to configure an Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) session for that particular program.