>SMB2/3 might still come into play if the remote desktop host isn't the same physical computer as the one providing the file storage.

I completely forgot that nowadays you may distribute an insane number of things to various boxes, to the point where you need a tourist agency to visit all the places involved in running your app.

> We had run into situation where customer was complaining that our application ran *significantly* slower on the newer, much-faster server that replaced the old one. They claimed the new server was configured *exactly* like the old one. Upon closer examination (though a remote connection) I'd noticed that the application resided on a network share -- I'd enquired if this was the same as the original server. At first the response was "yes, it's exactly the same", though with a bit of discussion on the other end, they responded "does it matter?"
>I responded "it might -- where was the application on the old server?"
>Their response was "on a local drive."
>I'd asked "a drive local to the rdp server?"
>"Yes"
>"That could make a difference. Where is this network share (that the new server is using) reside?"
>"It's an off-site network server"

I'd say that "exactly the same" never really existed. It's in the eye of... whoever wants to stop you from getting too deep into their setup.