Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Services) Team Blog

RD Connection Broker Performance and Scalability

termserv — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 04:03:12 GMT

We have published a white paper that analyzes RD Connection Broker performance in Windows Server 2012.

In Windows Server 2012, RD Connection Broker provides the following functionality:

Allows users to reconnect to their existing virtual desktops, RemoteApp programs, and session-based desktops.
Enables you to evenly distribute the load among RD Session Host servers in a session collection or pooled virtual desktops in a pooled virtual desktop collection.
Provides access to virtual desktops in a virtual desktop collection.

In Windows Server 2012, RD Connection Broker functionality has been extended to enable easy collection creation in addition to its connection routing and load-balancing capabilities. This white paper presents performance and scalability testing results for RD Connection Broker. It describes the most relevant factors that influence the performance of this role service.

For more information on Remote Desktop Services, refer to the TechCenter.

Get the best RDP 8.0 experience when connecting to Windows 7: What you need to know

termserv — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 02:54:12 GMT

The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) 8.0 update for Windows 7 provides many advantages for the remote work experience; for all the details, see KB2592687.

However, to benefit from the experience enhancements in RDP 8.0, you must configure your client and server correctly, as instructed in KB2592687. So if you want the best RDP 8.0/Windows 7 remote work experience, make sure you do the following three things:

1. Install updates KB2574819 and KB2592687 on the Windows 7 (not Windows Server 2008 R2) system you’ll be connecting to. If you’ll be connecting to this system from a Windows 7 PC, install these updates on that system as well. (If you’re running Windows 8 on your client PC, you’re all set. Sorry, there’s no RDP 8.0 support for Windows Vista or Windows XP.) After the installation, restart your computer.

2. RDP 8.0 is disabled by default, so you must enable the following Group Policy settings on the Windows 7 system you’ll be connecting to:

“Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Remote Desktop Services\Remote Desktop Session Host\Remote Session Environment\Enable Remote Desktop Protocol 8.0” should be set to “Enabled”
“Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Remote Desktop Services\Remote Desktop Session Host\Connections\Select RDP Transport Protocols” should be set to “Use both UDP and TCP”

Important: After these policy settings have been configured, restart your computer.

3. Allow port traffic: If you’re connecting directly to the Windows 7 system, make sure that traffic is allowed on TCP and UDP for port 3389. If you’re connecting via Remote Desktop Gateway, make sure you use RD Gateway in Windows Server 2012 and allow TCP port 443 and UDP port 3391 traffic to the gateway.

When you connect, look for the connection quality indicator on the Connection bar. If you click it, you should see a message saying that UDP is enabled. If you don’t see either of these two items, you’re not getting the full RDP 8.0 experience and you should check your configuration. If you see both of these, congratulations, you’re on RDP 8.0!

Please do note that while RDP 8.0 for Windows 7 provides many advantages, it has some limitations as well. For more information about these particulars, see KB2592687.

For more information about all the great improvements that come with RDP 8.0, see the following blog posts:

Register for the next Microsoft Jumpstart on April 18: Using Microsoft VDI to Enable New Workstyles

termserv — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 23:57:48 GMT

If you are new to the benefits of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), not sure when or why to use session-based or virtual machine-based desktop deployments, or have questions about the architecture (including App-V and UE-V), consider taking the new Jump Start course on April 18, 2013.

This free one-day course will cover the latest approaches to desktop virtualization and the business cases for each, guidance for choosing appropriate virtual desktop types according to requirements, and architectural guidance for building a VDI.

For all the details, see Using Microsoft VDI to Enable New Workstyles Jump Start.

RemoteFX vGPU Setup and Configuration for Windows Server 2012

termserv — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:43:36 GMT

I’m happy to let everyone know that thanks to Claus Emrich, we now have a TechNet Wiki post about how to set up and configure a RemoteFX virtual graphics processing unit (vGPU) using Windows Server 2012. This guide includes an overview of what RemoteFX vGPU is, what the requirements are, and how to install and configure it.

For all the details, see the RemoteFX vGPU Setup and Configuration Guide for Windows Server 2012.

—The RDS Team

What’s new in Windows Server 2012 Remote Desktop Gateway

termserv — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 20:51:54 GMT

Hi, I’m Venkat Bodapati, a software development engineer in Test on the Remote Desktop Virtualization (RDV) team. The purpose of this post is to highlight the key features added and enhancements made in Remote Desktop Gateway (RD Gateway) in Windows Server 2012. To get the most out of this article, you should be familiar with RD Gateway in Windows Server 2008 R2. (For more information about this, see Remote Desktop Gateway Manager).

In this document, I’ll discuss several changes and improvements to RD Gateway in Windows Server 2012, including:

Transport changes to enable the WAN improvements in Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) 8.0
Management console changes to facilitate using these new protocols
IIS configuration changes
Load balancing changes to complement the new protocols

Transport changes

In Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, RD Gateway supports only the RPC over HTTP transport. This is the only transport being used when a client makes an RDP connection via RD Gateway from inside or outside the corporate network.

In contrast, RD Gateway in Windows Server 2012 supports three types of transports: RPC over HTTP, HTTP, and UDP. The following table explains which transports are used when a client connects to various RD Gateway server versions.

Client	RD Gateway Server	RD Host	Transport(s) used
Windows 8 Windows 7 SP1 with RDP 8.0 update	Windows Server 2012	Windows 8 Windows Server 2012 Windows 7 SP1 with RDP 8.0 update	HTTP UDP RPC over HTTP (fallback)
Windows 8 Windows 7 SP1 with RDP 8.0 update	Windows Server 2012	Windows XP SP3 Windows Server 2008/R2 Windows Vista Windows 7	HTTP RPC over HTTP (fallback)
Windows XP SP3 Windows Vista Windows 7 without RDP 8.0 update	Windows Server 2012	Any	RPC over HTTP
Windows 8 Windows XP SP3 Windows Vista Windows 7	Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1	Any	RPC over HTTP

The RPC over HTTP transport is for RDP 7.1 and previous clients.
Beginning with Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, the RDP 8.0 update for Windows 7 SP1, and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (KB 2592687), RDP clients always use HTTP as the default transport, falling back to RPC over HTTP if the pure HTTP transport is not available. The HTTP transport uses the Secure Sockets Layer to establish secure connections between the remote desktop client and the remote desktop server through RD Gateway.
When connecting to remote desktop servers running Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, or the RDP 8.0 update for Windows 7 SP1 via Windows Server 2012 RD Gateway, UDP connections may be utilized to improve WAN performance. The UDP transport uses a Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) handshake to establish secure connections between the remote desktop client and the remote desktop server through RD Gateway. For more information, see the blog article RemoteFX for WAN: Overview of Intelligent and Adaptive Transports in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

UDP connections can’t be created as stand-alone; UDP connections are established only after a main HTTP connection has been created between the remote desktop client and the remote desktop server. The following table describes the ports being used by different transports in RD Gateway:

Transport Type	Default Port used
HTTP (includes RPC over HTTP) over SSL	443*
UDP	3391*

*These ports are configurable in the RD Gateway management console.

Management Console Changes

In Windows Server 2012, the RD Gateway server creates three internal connections for each user session: one HTTP connection and two UDP connections. The HTTP connection is used to maintain client communication with the target server, and the two UDP connections are used to support a rich multimedia experience. These three connections can be viewed in the monitoring node of the RD Gateway management console. In the case of Windows Server 2008 R2, only one connection appears for each user session. These changes in Windows Server 2012 will help administrators use the RD Gateway management console to verify that users are able to connect by using appropriate transport protocols.

Administrators can make changes to the HTTP and UDP transport settings by using a new tab called Transport Settings that was added to the Properties dialog box in the RD Gateway management console.

IIS Configuration Changes

In Windows Server 2008 R2, RD Gateway has a strong dependency on Internet Information Services (IIS). Installation of the RD Gateway role creates Rpc and RpcWithCert virtual directories on the IIS default website. It also configures default authentication methods being used to authenticate clients on the IIS server.

In RD Gateway in Windows Server 2012, the IIS configuration is applicable only for clients that are using the RPC over HTTP transport. Any legacy client that requests a connection through RD Gateway in Windows Server 2012 has to use the RPC over HTTP transport. The new HTTP transport doesn’t rely on IIS server; as such, IIS configuration settings will not affect Windows 8 remote desktop clients that request a connection through RD Gateway in Windows Server 2012.

IIS configuration settings continue to be applicable when Windows 8 remote desktop clients request a connection through legacy RD Gateway servers (for example, Windows Server 2008 R2). To use new remote desktop clients with legacy RD Gateway servers, anonymous authentication must be enabled for the IIS default website. Otherwise, client authentication can fail due to the new HTTP transport features. If this is not set correctly, users will observe an error stating that “the logon attempt failed” in the Windows 8 remote desktop client.

Load Balancing Changes

RD Gateway has another important feature called load balancing. The typical load balancing scenario consists of an RD Gateway farm with multiple RD Gateway servers. Previous versions of RD Gateway (Windows Server 2008 R2) support three types of load balancing mechanisms: Hardware, Software, and DNS Round Robin load balancing. All of the RD Gateway servers in the farm are used to load balance the end-user connections based on the traffic.

In Windows Server 2012, RD Gateway doesn’t support DNS Round Robin load balancing when used with the new HTTP transport, because this transport uses two HTTP channels (one for input and one for output) which must be routed to the same RD Gateway server (DNS Round Robin does not guarantee that both connections will be routed to the same server). However, hardware and software load balancers that support IP affinity, cookie-based affinity, or SSL ID-based affinity (and thus ensure that both HTTP connections are routed to the same server) can be used with RD Gateway. Furthermore, the UDP and HTTP connections may be handled by separate RD Gateway servers. Microsoft Network Load Balancing (NLB) supports IP affinity and thus can be used as a load balancer for RD Gateway.

Conclusion

RD Gateway in Windows Server 2012 offers new HTTP and UDP transports designed to allow remote users to take advantage of the WAN improvements in RDP 8.0 outside the corporate network. Take advantage of this support as well as the management console features, IIS configuration, and load balancing to provide a quality, scalable RDP 8.0 experience for your users!

Integrating App-V with Microsoft VDI

termserv — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:37:53 GMT

Often I’m asked by customers if they should use App-V with Microsoft VDI. The answer is a resounding yes! App-V 5.0 is designed to be easy and efficient to use in VDI environments (both session-based and virtual machine-based desktop deployment), allowing IT to make the best use of expensive disk resources without changing the way they get their jobs done. It lets IT simply choose to turn off local application storage, dramatically reducing disk requirements for VDI while leaving the application provisioning and update process unchanged.

By using App-V with Microsoft VDI IT can achieve higher session densities (incompatible applications can be hosted on the same Remote Desktop Session Host server) and lower storage costs. In addition, App-V can be leveraged across both physical as well as VDI deployments as part of an overall desktop strategy.

Read all about it in the new white paper: Integrating App-V with Microsoft VDI White Paper.

Microsoft VDI vs. VMware View: Freedom of choice

termserv — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:32:52 GMT

Adam Carter just put up a good blog describing the overall value that session-based and virtual machine-based desktop deployment provides in response to a VMware datasheet.

For anyone considering session-based and virtual machine-based desktop deployment, definitely worth a look.

Windows Multipoint Server 2012 Now Available Including Zero Client Support

termserv — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:51:21 GMT

I’m happy to announce that not only is Windows MultiPoint Server 2012 generally available, but last week, we added support for USB-Over-Ethernet Zero clients.

Windows MultiPoint Server is a product that uses Remote Desktop Services to offer a tailor-made experience for schools.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on this release.

If you’re interested in evaluating Windows MultiPoint Server 2012, click here.

Humanitarian Organizations Use Windows MultiPoint Server for Building Education

termserv — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:43:34 GMT

Recently, we released Windows MultiPoint Server 2012 to manufacturing. Last week, Microsoft announced a great example of how Windows MultiPoint Server is helping to bring access to technology in some of the most challenging environments in the world.

It’s great to see the products we produce used this way.

RemoteFX-Enabled Certification for Thin-Client Devices

termserv — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:10:11 GMT

Hello, everyone! This is Jeroen van Eesteren from the Remote Desktop Virtualization team. I want to take this opportunity to highlight the RemoteFX-enabled certification program and direct you to a list of a growing number of devices that have been certified.

The RemoteFX-Enabled certification program is designed to help customers find thin-client devices that have been designed and certified to deliver a great RemoteFX/Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) experience.

Today, our partners offer many thin-client devices that offer a wide range of functionality, such as wireless, multi-monitor support, Power over Ethernet (PoE), and all-in-one devices that include the display. Please ask your preferred thin-client vendor about what RemoteFX-enabled certified devices they offer.

I hope this information is useful and answers the questions you have about this topic. If you have further questions, please feel free to post a new thread in the RDS & TS forum.