Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2012, Step-by-Step Guides

Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2012 is awesome.  With highlights like huge performance improvements and an incredibly simplified deployment process, you’re going to want to see what this can do for your business and you can, for free!  Microsoft has the Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate available which you can download and install today. I’ll show you how you can set up several scenarios.

1. Quick and Easy, RemoteApp on a single server
2. Quick and Easy, RemoteApp using three servers
3. Adding a Gateway and Configuring Certificates
4. Adding a Licensing Server
5. Adding a Windows Server 2008 R2 RemoteApp source

Some articles I intend to be adding soon (more of a note to myself really)…

1. Configure a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Pool and PVD
2. Building and Maintaining VDI Personal Virtual Desktops
3. Delivering RemoteApp to end users via RSS Subscription

Let me know if you want to see something added to the list! Throughout these guides there are a couple acronyms I’ll be using pretty regularly, and my servers will tend use them in their names because I like to name my servers after the roles they will be delivering. There are three fundamental roles to an RDS deployment.

In addition to those three, there are a couple other roles that you can deploy to add more functionality:

Many of these roles can be co-located so you can have one server operating many of the roles, or you can deploy a new server for each one.  The only role that requires a physical server is the RDVH because that is a Hyper-V Host. Personally I like to start out a deployment with three Virtual Machines:

1. A Connection Broker and License Server
2. A Gateway and Web Access server
3. A Session Host / RemoteApp server

A deployment like that can be easily expanded to fit the needs of the business, like making the roles highly available or adding on a VDI deployment. N’joy!