Advantages over Windows Remote Desktop RemoteApp

What advantages does 2X ApplicationServer have over the built-in RemoteApp and related RD features in Windows Server 2008 R2?

 

Hi there,

the best way to find this out is to give it a try.
We don't internal comparison.

Kind regards,

 

We have setup two parallel environments to answer this question; one using 2x and the other using Windows 2008 R2 RemoteApp. From the perspective of single sign-on, pass through authentication, app deployment and resource based load balancing, 2x is easy to configure and setup. Especially so if you are familiar with managing Citrix.

Microsoft's RemoteApp is much more difficult to setup for pass through authentication but it is possible. There is no resource based load balancing with the stock Windows 2008 R2 Remote App Software. DNS round robin, session count based load balancing are options but setting them up breaks seamless sign on functionality outside of the RDP WEb portal. NLB is an option, seamless sign-on works fine with this but again that is not resource based load balancing. None of these things are as easy to setup as 2x at this time and don't give you resource based load balancing. The learning curve is steep but fun if you love to problem solve.

2x doesn't seem to work with the latest RDP security features; you can't connect to TS servers via the load balancer with RDP connection properties set to require TLS and/or NLA. There are 2x alternatives to this if that is an issue in your environment.

2x is a great product, but it has one Achilles heel for us; that is that ALT+TAB functionality does not appear to work properly outside of the Aero interface. This may not be problem for most, it isn't for me personally, but I found out the hard way it's a big deal with my end users. Remoteapp and Citrix do not have this issue but hopefully we will find a resolution to this problem.