Friday, August 30, 2013

Remote Desktop Services in 2012

Problem:
In a customer environment they wanted to install RDS and DC on the same server. A nice cheap solution, which have worked perfectly fine in the past. Not so anymore. In Server 2012, RDS requires by default that
  1. A domain controller is present, aka server is member of a domain
  2. the RDS role cannot be installed on the DC
Which means, you need at least two servers for a working installation?
Well no, there is apparently a official workaround from microsoft. It was not easy to find so im posting it here for future reference or until I’ve had time to try it out.
Edit:  A colleague actually tried this out on several machines and it seemed to work as expected.
Solution:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2833839/en-us?sd=rss - Guidelines for installing the Remote Desktop Session Host role service on a computer running Windows Server 2012 without the Remote Desktop Connection Broker role service
References:
http://www.wackytechtips.com/installing-and-configuring-remote-desktop-services-rds-on-windows-server-2012/
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2013/07/09/what-s-new-in-remote-desktop-services-for-windows-server-2012-r2.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831447.aspx - specs about rds 2012.
http://technet.microsoft.com/library/hh831568.aspx - deprecated
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2013/03/14/what-s-new-in-windows-server-2012-remote-desktop-gateway.aspx - changes
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2012/10/30/windows-8-windows-server-2012-remote-desktop-management-server.aspx - new ways of managing rds
http://www.urtech.ca/2013/02/solved-1-hour-to-install-and-configure-a-single-server-remote-desktop-services-on-server-2012/
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/cbffb2d4-ff9d-49ee-a9ce-a60db2262422/managing-server-2012-rds-in-a-workgroup- -
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2833839/en-us?sd=rss&spid=16526&wa=wsignin1.0 – ms article regarding standalone rds
http://microsoftplatform.blogspot.nl/








2 comments:

mwearl said...

"1.A domain controller is present, aka server is member of a domain"

Do you find this to be true on 2012 r2? I was told yesterday on a TechNet forum that running Remote Desktop Services in workgroup mode was possible and works fine. You just can't, as stated:
"...but you will not be able to use Server Manager to manage/configure RDS, or use virtually all of the RDS powershell cmdlets, and other RDS features. To manage things you would use a combination of group policy settings, wmi, and/or registry edits."

What are your thoughts?

Erik said...

Haven't tried it on R2. So no thoughts on that currently.

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