Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server does not give out all available licenses

Question

I installed the Terminal Server role in Windows Server 2003 Standard 64-bits. Still, only 2 connections are allowed. The License Manager says that there are 10 Device CALs available, which is correct, and that none are given out. For good measure I let the server reboot, to no effect.

Before this, there was another server (same Windows, except that it is 32 bits) active as a licensing server. I removed the role first and then then added it to the new server. I then removed the Terminal Server Licensing Server component off the old one and added it to the new one. After that, I added to licenses. When that didn't give the required result, I rebooted to new server. Still, the new server, with licenses and all, acts as if it has the 2 license RDP.

The server are all stand-alone, there is no active directory been set up. Both servers are in different workgroups.

Update (4/12/10): The server has changed the entries in the Terminal Server Licensing a few times. After installing the licenses it added an entry of which the exact phrasing I forgot but it was about temporary Windows 2003 device licenses. Later it added Windows Server 2003 - TS Per Device CAL. The temporary held 2 licenses (standard RDP licenses, I think) and the other 10. At some point, seemingly unrelated from the testing we did, it used a licenses from the new pool.

This morning, 2 licenses were used from the pool of 10 and only 1 from the temporary/RDP pool (I wish I had screenshots to show, it changed every few hours oir so it seems). Although I had already activated the server over the internet, and re-activated it, I decided to go through the whole procedure by phone.

Update 2 (4/12/10) The problem has been solved. It seems the activation over the web, while it said to have succeeded, did not work correctly. After activating by phone, it did work. What was different from the old setup and what put me on the wrong foot from that moment, was that I now need to create seperate user account because a session with one user account will be taken over by someone else when that account is used by that person. On the previous server, it was possible to open several sesions with the same account. We now use Per Device licenses, I'm not sure what was used before.

Thanks all for the replies.

Answer 1

@Sam: If I'm not mistaken, the process you outlined in your answer is valid for W2K, not W2K3. In W2K3 remote desktop for administratoin is "installed" by default and allows for 2 concurrent connections (3 if you include remote desktop to the console). Installing the Terminal Services role puts the server into "application" mode. The confusion (IMHO) comes from the fact that Microsoft's RDP platform\terminology changed from W2K to W2K3. In W2K you had to install Terminal Services (which installed the RDP protocol) and decide between remote administration or application mode and no remote connections were possible until you performed one or the other "install" of TS. In W2K3, the RDP protocol is installed by default and configured for remote administration mode. Installing the Terminal Services role switches the server to "application mode".

Answer 2

You need to install Terminal Server in application server mode, when you originally installed it looks like you did so in remote administration mode, which allows only 2 connections. You need to go into add/remove programs and and got to add/remove windows components, run through the process, with out selecting anything to install, it will then ask you what mode you want your terminal server in, select application mode.

This will work in Win2k, for 2003, see Joe's answer.