RDS Farm 2016

[Badaz52]

Hi everyone,

 

Obviously at the moment our RD servers are being smashed to pieces I'm sure but when this all blows over I'm looking to do a job that I should have done a while ago and create an RDS farm. I just wondered a couple of things:

 

I want a single HTTPS web access for users from home which I assume is the Gateway and for the system to be load balanced across multiple servers (session hosts?) I wondered what hardware requirements I should have for each server. They will all be VMs.

 

Cheers

 

It might be easier if you post your setup if you have an RDS server farm including hardware requirements.

[mdrabble]

I have a 2019 setup - opted for Session Hosts over VM Pools as cheaper cost for Licensing.

 

3 VMs and 2 physical servers

 

VM1 - Gateway, RD Web Access - Install HTML5 so staff and students can use RDP via a web browser and seems to be works well) - 2 CPU, 16GB Ram

VM2 - Connection Broker and Licensing - 1 CPU, 8GB Ram

VM3 - User Disk Profiles (all profiles saved here - so they get the same profile depending on which Session Host they connect to) - 1 CPU, 8GB Ram

2 Physical Servers as Session Hosts - HP DL360p Gen 8 servers with 384GB Ram in each server

 

Set up 2 weeks ago - took me ages to work out the kinks - as I thought the Connection Broker would have automatically load balanced the Session hosts, ended up using DNS Round Robin for the session hosts.

 

HTML5 front end works really well - just a shame no way of customising to add things like School Logos etc.

[Badaz52]

I have a 2019 setup - opted for Session Hosts over VM Pools as cheaper cost for Licensing.

 

3 VMs and 2 physical servers

 

VM1 - Gateway, RD Web Access - Install HTML5 so staff and students can use RDP via a web browser and seems to be works well) - 2 CPU, 16GB Ram

VM2 - Connection Broker and Licensing - 1 CPU, 8GB Ram

VM3 - User Disk Profiles (all profiles saved here - so they get the same profile depending on which Session Host they connect to) - 1 CPU, 8GB Ram

2 Physical Servers as Session Hosts - HP DL360p Gen 8 servers with 384GB Ram in each server

 

Set up 2 weeks ago - took me ages to work out the kinks - as I thought the Connection Broker would have automatically load balanced the Session hosts, ended up using DNS Round Robin for the session hosts.

 

HTML5 front end works really well - just a shame no way of customising to add things like School Logos etc.

 

Awesome thanks bud. Yeah when I'd been reading up on it it was confusing as hell sometimes it's just easier to ask someone who has already done it. We are or were depending on how you look at things at the moment getting new curriculum servers this Summer which would have left me with 3x Dell Poweredge servers with 64GB of RAM in each so I was going to run with 3 session hosts.

[kingoranks]

Hi Guys,

 

I have a physical RDS SERVER 2012 in production, have also got two (VM) RDS 2016 and 2019 in my test environment. is it possible to add these two session hosts to the server 2012 or just wait and do a new farm of server 2019

Edited May 20, 2020 by kingoranks

[ITGURU]

I have a 2019 setup - opted for Session Hosts over VM Pools as cheaper cost for Licensing.

 

3 VMs and 2 physical servers

 

VM1 - Gateway, RD Web Access - Install HTML5 so staff and students can use RDP via a web browser and seems to be works well) - 2 CPU, 16GB Ram

VM2 - Connection Broker and Licensing - 1 CPU, 8GB Ram

VM3 - User Disk Profiles (all profiles saved here - so they get the same profile depending on which Session Host they connect to) - 1 CPU, 8GB Ram

2 Physical Servers as Session Hosts - HP DL360p Gen 8 servers with 384GB Ram in each server

 

Set up 2 weeks ago - took me ages to work out the kinks - as I thought the Connection Broker would have automatically load balanced the Session hosts, ended up using DNS Round Robin for the session hosts.

 

HTML5 front end works really well - just a shame no way of customising to add things like School Logos etc.

Would you mind sharing what set of instructions you used for enabling HTML5. i have 2 sites using remoteapp and i enabled html5 on one of them some time ago for testing. wasnt until weeks later when i wanted to add another app it borked the server and could no longer access the 'collections' part in server manager to manage any of the apps. Thanks.

[mdrabble]

I looked at a number of them to be honest - when testing.

 

Used this one to install

 

http://microsoftplatform.blogspot.com/2018/01/html5-client-for-microsoft-remote.html?m=1

 

Will post the one from here (when I find it) I used to customise it slightly to add the school name as there is very little in the way of customising the logon page.

[mdrabble]

Here is the post for customising the logon page

 

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/199636-customise-rdp-webclient.html

Edited May 21, 2020 by mdrabble

[ITGURU]

I looked at a number of them to be honest - when testing.

 

Used this one to install

 

http://microsoftplatform.blogspot.com/2018/01/html5-client-for-microsoft-remote.html?m=1

 

Will post the one from here (when I find it) I used to customise it slightly to add the school name as there is very little in the way of customising the logon page.

Thanks I'll give it another go and test making sure I keep the original back up before enabling. I assume I can enable on the current live servers as doesn't affect the standard remoteapp and will just need to direct users to the new url path when want to test with users or roll out?

[mdrabble]

You can run the hrml5 and default web app side by side.

 

HTML5 will automatically pick up any published apps.

 

In iis I changed the default page to the HTML5 page.

[ass17]

If anyone else needs info on how to setup an RDS Farm 2016, we used this:

 

http:// https://nedimmehic.org/2017/01/21/deploying-remote-desktop-services-2016-step-by-step/

 

Very helpful!

[Sheridan]

We had a simple single server RDS 2019 setup before the pandemic (albeit a physical server it was a good 2 CPU, 80GB model) and it's been handling up to 50 concurrent sessions with no problems. As a precaution I added another spare physical server (only single CPU/24GB Ram) and load balanced it 70/30 and its been great.

 

I was expecting complaints with 150 staff at home, but its never been more than 50 concurrent sessions thanks partly to a bigger usage of Google Classroom, which has shot right up

 

When the situation settles I will probably revert back to the single server, I was pleasantly surprised how well it coped.

[Badaz52]

So im all setup. 2x physical sh, 1x connection broker/licensing vm 1x web access gateway.

 

Ive installed HTML5 and I want that to br the main method for access but if I still want to provide the RDP file how can i do it to make sure it still load balances? Also some users will still want to use the app on apple/android so i want to facilitate this too. As i have the connection broker now which server do they specify for connecting?

 

Lastly what ports do i need open to the outside world and from which servers?

 

Thanks!

[gh5000]

So im all setup. 2x physical sh, 1x connection broker/licensing vm 1x web access gateway.

 

Ive installed HTML5 and I want that to br the main method for access but if I still want to provide the RDP file how can i do it to make sure it still load balances? Also some users will still want to use the app on apple/android so i want to facilitate this too. As i have the connection broker now which server do they specify for connecting?

 

Lastly what ports do i need open to the outside world and from which servers?

 

Thanks!

 

The DNS address you give out, or put in the rdp file should point to the broker server.

 

You can choose to download an rdp file from the html5 page instead of viewing in a browser. There's a button on the page to bring up the right column menu where you can toggle the rdp file on.

 

Only thing to open is 443 to the gateway.

 

For things like the app your instructions to the end user should show adding the gateway, how to format their creds (domain name etc), and then either the internal DNS of the broker or the remote app web feed.