RDS in 2016

[FN-GM]

? I thought RDS web gateway used AD auth anyway?

 

Federated services is more secure as the authentication doesn't take place directly at the RDS Web Server. You can also use two factor authentication with ADFS. Also it mean a seamless experience for users, we have ADFS for multiple services, they only need to login to one and can access all the other services without needing to authenticate again.

 

You can actually use ADFS but you have to login twice! First to ADFS and then to RDS.

[DrCheese]

ah ok, yes the only logging onto one is a big thing as it makes life easier for everyone. I just wish more services supported ADFS! (Mostly software like mymaths/samlearning/GCSEPod)

[FN-GM]

I just wish more services supported ADFS! (Mostly software like mymaths/samlearning/GCSEPod)

 

Agreed. It would make life easier, especially for the primary school children.

[Tefters]

Found another gotcha folks!

 

Windows Key + W in an RDS session (bloody kids...).

 

The keyboard shortcut combination opens up the Windows Ink workspace which has an option for Sticky Notes... Brilliant... #facepalm

If your like me and got rid of immersive sticky notes in favour of old school sticky notes than it causes a blank screen and they cant do anything and you have to log off their RDS session remotely.

 

Easy fix to disable via GPO - How to disable Windows Ink Workspace on Windows 10 | Windows Central

[Tefters]

Finally got round to looking into the Start Menu search issue on my 2016 RDS server too.

 

Turns out in Server 2016 there is a new service called *drumroll* "Windows Search" (no its not present in Windows 10, just checked...).

This service is disable by default for performance reasons due to indexing and therefore if you plan to use Server 2016 as a desktop environment you will want to enable this service for Auto-Startup and Start it.

 

Cheers Microsoft!

[ajg]

I have a test RDS 2016 setup nicely up and running but am having issues getting Sims Workstation to work on it, has anyone managed this? Appreciate it is not supported but works fine on 2012R2 so assumed it would on 2016.....maybe I'm wrong though:)

 

Thanks.

[Tefters]

I have a test RDS 2016 setup nicely up and running but am having issues getting Sims Workstation to work on it, has anyone managed this? Appreciate it is not supported but works fine on 2012R2 so assumed it would on 2016.....maybe I'm wrong though:)

 

Thanks.

 

Works fine on my 2016 RDS Session Hosts, whats up?

[FN-GM]

Works fine on my 2016 RDS Session Hosts, whats up?

 

Same here, works fine

[ajg]

Appears to install fine but when I run it the icon appears shortly on the desktop but then just disappears. Get an event log 1026 .net runtime error and a 1000 application error which I've not seen before on any of my 2012R2 servers.

 

Glad to hear it should work anyway so will have to keep persevering.

[ajg]

Did you install it manually (if so what installer did you use) or use Solus? Also did you use change user /install mode? Thanks.

[ajg]

Seem to have it sorted now. Looking at the logs it looks like something had corrupted the v4.0.30319 .net install on both rds hosts as installed sims on the rds gateway (also server 2016) as a quick test and that worked fine. Spent the morning re-building both rds hosts from scratch and sims installed fine first time.......wonderful.....thanks for the info anyhow.

[Homer]

Anybody else on a full 2016 RDS setup?

 

If so, running Gen2 VM's, are you having issues recreating collections?

[Tefters]

Session based is fine for me

[Asgard]

Hope it's ok for me to jump into this and ask a question .

 

We currently have a pretty big Dell vWorkspace install and with them shelving it Ina few years I'm playing with RDS 2016. It's just shy of 300 concurrent connection licenses split between 6 Hyper-V 2012 RD boxes - all on SSD storage

 

I've killed 2 of my 6 hyper-hosts (2012 R2) and converted them to 2016.

 

I've got RDWeb, Broker/Gateway and connected the two hyper-v hosts and have RDWeb page running; using this as a guide;

 

http://blog.itvce.com/2015/06/30/deploying-windows-10-virtual-desktop-infrastructure-on-windows-server-2016-technical-preview/

 

My question is around the template.

 

We use MDT to deploy our image (with office16 and Adobe Creative Cloud already in the master image but

 

in vworkspace the gold image is domain joined is this not the case in RDS

 

In theory could I MDT a "template" and disjoin it from the domain and then use that as a template. Also in vWorkspace the VDIs were basically using differencing disks to keep each VDI smaller - is this similar in a VDI setup for RDS - we are going to deploy both apps and a full VDi because the full VDI gets used heavily.

 

And is it pretty straight forward to say create 30 VDIs automatically.

 

And any decent links about for customising the RDWeb App page.

 

We have VMM2016 if that helps at all - as I've seen some posts about using VMM with rds2016

Cheers

Edited December 21, 2016 by Asgard

[Tefters]

Nope no domain join on the template due to needing sysprep to wrap it up, it's not like a deployment via MDT.

 

Sorry I should elaborate a bit more...

 

Template is deployed by RDS VDI itself and during your collection setup you are asked to specify domain, OU for VM's etc...

Edited December 21, 2016 by Tefters

[Tefters]

Also in terms of your design I presume you are setting up a cluster for the VDI hosts?

 

Cluster shared volume is the best approach and there's the new Storage Spaces Direct on top of that too which would be ideal with the number of physical hosts you have and SSD's.

Storage Spaces Direct could be used to bring all your SSD's together in your physical hosts to form a virtual SAN and then also cluster the hosts as well for redundancy of the VDI guest resources essentially giving you a redundancy over you Storage (virtual SAN) and VDI host farm.

Edited December 21, 2016 by Tefters

[Tefters]

Ow and as a final FYI there is a big bug in 2016 whereby drive passthrough via Remote Desktop is bluescreening servers and a fix is in the works but will be another month or so leaving you to put up with hosts crashing or turn off drive passthrough.

[Asgard]

Nope no domain join on the template due to needing sysprep to wrap it up, it's not like a deployment via MDT.

 

Sorry I should elaborate a bit more...

 

Template is deployed by RDS VDI itself and during your collection setup you are asked to specify domain, OU for VM's etc...

 

Cool, so I could put the MDT image onto the VM and then disjoin it - save installing a load of apps!

[Tefters]

Cool, so I could put the MDT image onto the VM and then disjoin it - save installing a load of apps!

 

Just do a copy of your existing MDT task sequence and add a last step command line = net computer \\computername /del

That way you have an MDT TS for your template as well

 

EDIT - It might actually be NETDOM to be more specific but you get the jist.

Edited December 22, 2016 by Tefters

[Asgard]

Also in terms of your design I presume you are setting up a cluster for the VDI hosts?

 

Cluster shared volume is the best approach and there's the new Storage Spaces Direct on top of that too which would be ideal with the number of physical hosts you have and SSD's.

Storage Spaces Direct could be used to bring all your SSD's together in your physical hosts to form a virtual SAN and then also cluster the hosts as well for redundancy of the VDI guest resources essentially giving you a redundancy over you Storage (virtual SAN) and VDI host farm.

 

Hi thanks for this.

 

We have 3 hyper-v clusters at the college

 

Production Cluster (for virtualised servers)

And it's associated failover/replica cluster in our backup data centre - production is 2012R2 and the backup is now 2016.

 

Both are made up of two groups of 6 x R710 poweredge servers with 4x10 gb ports (two for LAN access and two for SAN access) in each node

 

The failover one now uses storage spaces (having been upgraded 2016) and over Xmas we will be flattening our production Cluster and moving that to server 2016 and storage spaces.

 

Our current vWorkspace Cluster uses 6 x blades from two Dell C6220 Series servers with onboard local SSD storage ( server 2012 R2) especially with differencing disks this has always been their recommended setup.

 

Two of these have been flattened and are now the basis for our RDS VDI and over the next 12 months I plan to move it all to RDS

 

However the newly freed up iSCSI SSD SAN is setup to be a Cluster shared volume for the two new RDS VDI hosts so yeah we're on the same lines as what you wrote.

 

Thanks for your reply much appreciated

Edited December 22, 2016 by Asgard

[Asgard]

Nope no domain join on the template due to needing sysprep to wrap it up, it's not like a deployment via MDT.

 

Sorry I should elaborate a bit more...

 

Template is deployed by RDS VDI itself and during your collection setup you are asked to specify domain, OU for VM's etc...

 

VWorkspace was / is essentially a pretty front end that does it all for you ha

[mukz]

VWorkspace was / is essentially a pretty front end that does it all for you ha

 

yup we have it too. bloody got announced EOL a year after buying it!

[CAWJames]

I can go one up on that, they shelved it half way between us deciding to buy and buying. They came cap in hand, apologising, and would we like to buy Citrix instead...

[Asgard]

yup we have it too. bloody got announced EOL a year after buying it!

 

We have had it since 2009 when it was Provision Networks then quest bought it and were a

Reference site for people to come see it in action. It's funny that you can still see Provision Netowks in the registry ha

 

My hatred for Dell is infinite because of this - all because of their VMware/EmC love in. I saw the roadmap for the next few versions just before they shelved it and some of it looked impressive.

 

Dell had a cheek to send me a renewal for support and I politely declined that one but once it was transferred to quest I paid up for a further year.

 

That's the odd part. Dell shelved it but the new owners are sending out vWorkspace info from the returned quest branding.

 

I'd bet money quest being out their own product using some of the original IP licensed from dell. It's too good to just fade away

 

Moral of the story. I hate Dell

[Asgard]

I can go one up on that, they shelved it half way between us deciding to buy and buying. They came cap in hand, apologising, and would we like to buy Citrix instead...

 

Sir I fee your pain.

I feel really bad that I sat across from 2 institutions that a company called Nviron (with our Dell account manager) brought in and I Demo'd and a month after they buy it...

 

Dell shelve it.

 

Even people in Dell were told it wasn't being shelved