Once again, my boss has sent me to the font of all knowledge, aka this joint, in search of opinions. This time, it’s VPNs versus terminal servers. Which one’s better, what are the upsides and downsides of both, and which would you use?
Thanks as always!
CJ
(Now to sneak off the BBQ Pit! What’s that, boss? Yes, I’m working – I’m still asking the question! 
)
Well, VPN and TS are two rather different things. VPN mounts a remote machine on a network while TS allow a remote user to create sessions on a specific machine. Of course there’s functionality overlap (your TS user has the network available to him, for instance).
What functionality are you trying to provide to your remote users?
Don’t ask me about terminal servers, but we have a VPN set up for remote access at my office. It generally works, but is exceptionally slow and is highly likely to freeze/crash. If using the VPN, i’ll download the file and work on it remotely and then up load the modified file after I’m done. Actually, when I can remember, I use the “check out” feature of our document control system to email the document to myself at home and then work on it. Its more reliable.
CJ
Are you sure you don’t mean VNC vs TS - there’s more of an overlap in functionality.
That was my thought as well.
Yep! VNC, Terminal Services (Microsoft and Cisco implementations exist), SSH -x, Timbuktu, PCAnywhere, and Apple Remote Desktop are all ways of essentially running a computer from somewhere else.
Some of them give you a session (and someone else could continue to use the computer locally, or remotely for that matter, and the two of you have a different set of running applications, mouse-cursor positions etc — these would be Terminal Services (both versions) and SSH -x; others let you remotely join the user/session that is currently logged in locally, and you see exactly what someone would see if they were physically sitting in front of that computer, and only one of you can effectively really control the computer — these would be PCAnywhere, Timbuktu, VNC, and Apple Remote Desktop.
VPN, on the other hand, has absolutely nothing to do with remotely controlling another computer. It’s just a tunnel through a firewall so you, with your outside IP address, get merged into the corporate or otherwise-private (usually 192.168.xxx.xxx) network.
You can, in fact, conjoin VPN with any of the beforementioned remote-control softwares. I used to VPN into the corporate network and then Timbuktu to my office workstation from my Powerbook at home. If I hadn’t VPN’ed first I couldn’t make the TB2 connex, it would’ve been blocked. But without the TB2 just having the VPN wouldn’t have let me control any machine (and its programs) other than those on my own laptop. Well, OK, I suppose if you want to stretch a point I could’ve mounted some other computer’s HD (in PC-speak for you non-Mac-folk, that’s like mapping a seriously remote directory or drive as my H or L or W drive) and then running programs or opening files from it, but that would generally be painfully slow, whereas running my office workstation remotely means everything (except screen refresh) runs at the same speed as if I were still at work.
I can’t stand VNC [assuming that’s what the OP meant] compared to TS. It’s slow, doesn’t integrate with Windows authentication [though I think I saw a version that did – UltraVNC? – but it was beta at the time], and isn’t secure enough for us. We’ll use it begrudgingly if a terminal session isn’t enough and there is an absolute need to connect to the console. Other than that…TS it is.
BTW, if you’re using Server 2003 its version of TS gives you the option of connecting to the console. It is an absolute joy to use. Just like VNC or PCAnywhere but with the integration and speed of TS.
This depends on the OS and how VNC is set up. I have VNC set up to provide multiple sessions on my Linux server at home, for instance. Because of limitations with Windows, though, you can only get the single session capability there.
Obviously, cross-platform compatibility is a concern of mine, so VNC it is.