PLATFORM FOR ENABLING TERMINAL SERVICES VIRTUALIZATION

• US 20100131654A1
• Filed: 11/25/2008
• Published: 05/27/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 11/25/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Alladi, Mahadev, Malakapalli, Meher, Agarwala, Niraj, Ben-Shachar, Ido, Belkine, Artem, Palekar, Ashwin
• Granted Patent: US 9,009,329 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/227
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/08 specially adapted for terminal emulation, e.g. Telnet
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1006 with static server selection, e.g. the same server being selected for a specific client
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/14 Session management for real-time applications in data packet communications networks H04L65/1066
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/142 Managing session states for stateless protocols; Signalling session states; State transitions; Keeping-state mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/563 Data redirection of data network streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/564 Enhancement of application control based on intercepted application data

Abstract

Disclosed are techniques for providing a platform and application program interface (API) that leverages a terminal services session broker infrastructure to support third party plug-in applications. In a typical scenario, when a user requests for a connection to access third party plug-in applications, the application program interface may interact with the session broker process to identify sessions or suitable servers to which the user can be connected. The user may access the third party plug-in applications through the identified sessions or suitable servers.

Claims

1. In a system for enabling connections between a client computer and at least one of a plurality of virtual machines executing on a plurality of servers, a method comprising:

receiving at one of said plurality of servers a request from the client computer for a virtual machine session;

requesting a redirection packet for redirecting the client computer to a target destination;

invoking a first plug-in for determining the target destination;

returning an indication of the target destination and further indicating one or more secondary plug-ins for load balancing and orchestrating said redirecting;

invoking the one or more secondary plug-ins and requesting the following;

a selected virtual machine;

indication of whether the selected virtual machine is instantiated;

a location when the selected virtual machine is not instantiated; and

preparing the selected virtual machine for accepting a new connection;

identifying an internet protocol (IP) address for said selected virtual machine and returning the IP address;

embedding said IP address in said redirection packet and transmitting the redirection packet to the client computer; and

connecting the client computer to one of the plurality of virtual machines based on information contained in the redirection packet.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein:

the request for the virtual machine session is received by a redirector executing on the one of said plurality of servers;

the request for the redirection packet is received by a session broker and said IP address is returned to the session broker, the session broker in turn sending the IP address to the redirector; and

said embedding and transmitting is executed by the redirector.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the redirector and session broker resides on the same server.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein when the selected virtual machine is a personal desktop, the first plug-in communicates with a central publishing service to obtain personal desktops assigned to said client computer using an Active Directory (AD) schema for personalized desktops, wherein the central publishing service communicates with the Active Directory.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein said one or more secondary plug-ins comprises filter plug-ins and resource plug-ins, wherein the resource plug-ins manage one or more server farms via one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by the session broker.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the filter plug-ins can override the resource plug-ins.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein more than one of said filter plug-ins may be loaded and the filter plug-ins can register for target, session, and connection notifications using the one or more APIs.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein filter plug-in priority can be enforced by using an integer sub-key in a registry for each filter plug-in, wherein the integer sub-keys determine the order in which filter plug-ins are called.

9. The method of claim 5, wherein said one or more secondary plug-ins comprises a virtual machine plug-in, wherein the virtual machine plug-in is a default resource plug-in.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising communicating to a virtual machine host agent on a host virtual machine in order to initiate and orchestrate the host virtual machine.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising obtaining the IP address using key-value pairs implemented by a hypervisor.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein said invoking further comprises determining whether the filter should remove the selected virtual machine when the client computer is finished using the selected virtual machine.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein said target destination may be a terminal server farm, virtual machine farm, or personal desktop.

14. A system adapted to connect a client computer to one of a plurality of virtual machines executing on a plurality of servers, comprising:

at least one processor; and

at least one memory communicatively coupled to said at least one processor, the memory having stored therein computer-executable instructions for implementing;

a redirector configured to connect the client computer to a terminal server and request a redirection packet for redirecting the client computer to a target destination; and

a session broker configured to receive said request and communicate with one or more plug-in modules to (1) determine an internet protocol (IP) address identifying a virtual machine as the target destination, (2) identify a plug-in module for load balancing and orchestrating said redirecting, (3) determine a current state of the target destination, (4) prepare the target destination for accepting connections, and (5) send a redirection packet including the IP address to the redirector.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein the virtual machine is executing on a server farm.

16. The system of claim 14 wherein the virtual machine is a personal desktop and the session broker is further configured to communicate with a central publishing service to obtain personal desktops assigned to said client computer using an Active Directory (AD) schema for personalized desktops.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the redirector further effects the connecting of the client computer to one of the plurality of virtual machines based on information contained in the redirection packet.

18. A computer readable storage medium storing thereon computer executable instructions for enabling the connection of a remote client computer to one of a plurality of virtual machines executing on a plurality of servers, comprising instructions for:

receiving at one of said plurality of servers a request from the client computer for a virtual machine session;

requesting a redirection packet for redirecting the client computer to a target destination on said plurality of servers;

invoking one or more plug-in modules for determining the target destination, performing load balancing, and orchestrating said redirecting;

identifying an internet protocol (IP) address for said target destination; and

embedding said IP address in said redirection packet and transmitting the redirection packet to the client computer.

19. The computer readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein said connecting is implemented using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

20. The computer readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein said one or more plug-in modules comprise policy plug-ins, resource plug-ins, or filter plug-ins.