2X makes Terminal Services and Citrix Fault Tolerant with 2X LoadBalancer v4
Easily implement SSL, resource-based load balancing and session reconnection for Microsoft Terminal Services or Citrix Metaframe servers
London, UK, 7 February 2006 - 2X has released 2X LoadBalancer for Windows Terminal Services & Citrix Metaframe, a tool to load balance RDP/ICA sessions between terminal servers and provide fault tolerance. Only one gateway machine needs to be exposed to the Internet, and this connection can be established via SSL, thereby drastically increasing the security of Terminal Servers.
"2X LoadBalancer for Windows Terminal Services allows a company to implement enterprise level fault tolerance and security without the enterprise price tag or administration effort." said Nikoloas Makris, President 2X.
Product features include:
Resource based load balancing: 2X LoadBalancer intelligently distributes the load to the Terminal Server machine with least usage. By retrieving information about the Terminal Servers' resource usage before establishing the connection, it is able to determine which Terminal Server can best handle the incoming session. By contrast, network load balancing in Windows Server simply distributes connections on a round robin basis, independent of server load.
Reconnects users to disconnected sessions: 2X LoadBalancer also checks if a user is running a disconnected session on any of the servers and if so, reconnects them to the right server. This is convenient for the user and saves significant server resources -- there is no need for Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Windows 2003 Enterprise Server with session directory.
Ensures redundancy of Terminal Servers: 2X LoadBalancer checks whether the terminal service of a particular server is responding before forwarding a connection to it. This allows you to ensure complete redundancy of each Terminal Server. By contrast, network load balancing in Windows Terminal Server simply checks if the machine is alive: If the terminal service is not responding the user's connection will be forwarded regardless, thus resulting in the user not being able to connect.
Enhanced Security using SSL: When used in SSL Gateway mode, the 2X LoadBalancer provides end-to- end SSL encryption to the Terminal Servers. This greatly enhances security and provides a firewall/proxy friendly solution with true SSL/HTTPS capabilities.
Supports Microsoft Terminal Services and Citrix Servers: 2X LoadBalancer is designed to work with Microsoft Terminal Services Servers (Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition, Windows 2000 Terminal Services, and Windows 2003 Terminal Services) and with Citrix MetaFrame.
Pricing and Availability
Pricing starts from as little as $395 for managing up to 2 servers, $775 for 4 servers, and $1750 for unlimited servers. More information and a free trial version of the product are available at: http://www.2x.com/loadbalancer/
About 2X
2X Software Ltd (2X) is a new company developing software for the booming server-based computing market. Thin client computing controls spiraling PC management costs, centralizes application and desktop management, improves security and performance and allows users to work remotely. The company's product line includes: 2X ThinClientServer for Windows/Linux, 2X LoadBalancer for Terminal Services/Citrix, 2X ApplicationServer for Windows Terminal Services and 2X SecureRDP for Windows Terminal Services.
All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.