Microsoft's Remote Desktop Services Virtual Desktop Infrastructure product offers a lot of benefits, but not every IT administrator knows where to start.
As a virtual desktop administrator, you should learn the ins and outs of this VDI product to make the most of it. Learn step by step how to get Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and some of the basic RDS components up and running.
Launch Server Manager and select Server Roles. Once the roles manager screen is up, check the box for Remote Desktop Services. Some other boxes may already be checked, but this is fine -- the only box you need to worry about for this step is the Remote Desktop Services box. Click the next button in the bottom right corner to proceed.
Now you should see an introduction to RDS. Select the next button at the bottom of the page.
RDS includes several components and settings (Figure 1). These components can be on one machine or many.
As with past Terminal Server licensing, there are two license options: per-device and per-user (Figure 2).
Select which users to grant access to the local Remote Desktop Session Host. This server component is not required for RDS to work. If you choose to install the Remote Desktop Session Host, you will get this prompt (Figure 3).
The next screen is called Configure Client Experience (Figure 4). This is where you set the defaults for the end-user experience with the VDI system and remote desktop.
Just as with Terminal Server of the past, you can configure the scope of the Remote Desktop Session Host license server. You have the following two options:
The Remote Desktop Gateway uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to tunnel and encrypt traffic from the client. This functionality requires a certificate. There are two options for certificates:
In either case, the client must trust the certificate (Figure 6).
These next few screens go beyond the scope of RDS but are related, so this article will just cover the basics.
This is where you would configure a policy that states who is allowed to establish a desktop connection to the Remote Desktop Gateway
(Figure 7).
You can use this to configure and enforce network access policies such as Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) and network access protection from the client (Figure 8).
You can also use this feature to define different policies based on users' connectivity (Figure 9).
Remote Desktop Web Access requires Internet Information Services (IIS), so the next two screens are for installing and configuring IIS. First, there is the overview screen (Figure 10).
The second screen is the configuration screen (Figure 11).
At this point, you're done. The last two screens just let you know what you're installing (Figure 12).
There is also the final screen that lets you know whether any additional steps like rebooting are required (Figure 13).
Now that you have installed and configured RDS, you can start using Remote Desktop Session Host and Remote Desktop Gateway Manager.
28 Jan 2021