Supported configurations for Remote Desktop Services
- Article
- 02/10/2022
- 6 minutes to read
- 14 contributors
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Applies to: Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019
When it comes to supported configurations for Remote Desktop Services environments, the largest concern tends to be version interoperability. Most environments include multiple versions of Windows Server - for example, you may have an existing Windows Server 2012 R2 RDS deployment but want to upgrade to Windows Server 2016 to take advantage of the new features [like support for OpenGL\OpenCL, Discrete Device Assignment, or Storage Spaces Direct]. The question then becomes, which RDS components can work with different versions and which need to be the same?
So with that in mind, here are basic guidelines for supported configurations of Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server.
Note
Make sure to review the system requirements for Windows Server.
Install Remote Desktop Session Host role service in Windows Server without Connection Broker role service
- Article
- 09/24/2021
- 4 minutes to read
- 3 contributors
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This article provides guidelines to install and configure the Remote Desktop Session Host role service on a computer that is running Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, or Windows Server 2012 R2 without the Remote Desktop Connection Broker role service installed.
Applies to: Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2
Original KB number: 2833839
Design Overview
For this deployment I want to use the below:
2x RDS Broker Server
2x RDS Session Hosts
Users are to connect to the RDS Broker Servers as below and then redirected to the RDS Session Hosts. From there they can then connect to other target servers.
As the clients will be connecting to the RDS Broker Servers we need to add DNS Round Robin for the RDS Broker Servers in DNS. For example we have rdsbroker1.domain.com with IP 10.10.20.10 and rdsbroker2.domain.com with IP 10.10.20.11. We would add a new DNS name for the RDS Broker Cluster of:
rdsbrokercluster.domain.com IP 10.10.20.10
rdsbrokercluster.domain.com IP 10.10.20.11
In Microsoft DNS please ensure DNS Round Robin is also enabled.
Prerequisites
There are only two necessary steps before we embark on installing RDS. Those are:
- All servers are domain joined
- There are at least two available servers
The reason that we need two servers is that the RD Licensing role will go on the second server rather than all on one, as this is considered a Microsoft best practice. In this tutorial, we use the Domain Controller as the RD License server which would not be considered best practice. The reason for doing this in this tutorial is to keep the installation simple.
How to Setup Remote Desktop Connection Broker Load Balancing in Windows Server 2016
Author:
sengstar2005
Updated date:
Dec 25, 2020
The tutorial will go through the steps of installing an additional RD Session Host Server, and how to deploy it as part of a Farm that hosts an application collection. It will show how to connect via Remote Desktop into the RD Session Host Farm from the internal network.
Accessing the RD Session Host Farm from an external network [e.g. internet] can be done through the use of the Remote Desktop Gateway. This will be discussed in another tutorial.
This tutorial requires that Remote Desktop Services for Windows 2016 be already installed. It will show how to add an additional RD Session Host server to the RD Session Host Farm.