Configure DNS for a RDSH Farm
Create new A records for the RDSH farm using the session server IP address’s.
Configure RD Gateway Manager
Create a RD Gateway-Managed computer group for the RDSH. Add each Session server and the Farm FQDN.
Create a RAP Policy For the RDSH FARM
Connecting to RDSH FARM
When connecting to the server for administration, you need to use the following mstsc /admin /v:<servername>.
Ryan Mangan's IT Blog 
Hi Ryan,
If the session hosts (RDSH) and connection brokers (RDCB) are installed as separate roles on different servers, wouldn’t be better rpd’d to RDCB farm name instead RDSH farm?
Thanks,
Cem
It all depends on your configuration and how you want to setup your solution. By creating a rdsh farm you can configure thin clients / clients to directly connect. Using rdcb redirect in ha mode will only allow you to redirect to a single collection\vdi pool. You Would also need to configure the redirection to the rdsh session collection to make this work. There is no requirement to configure a rdsh farm as the connection broker redirects traffic. My article only shows that you can load balance between session hosts.
Best Regards,
Ryan,
I figured you would be the best person to ask… I am not using RDWA – currently we deploy a custom RDP file to our users via an installer. Everything works really fast on all OS platforms, however XP users ALWAYS have to log in twice. The RDP file is set to only ask credentials 1 time, and it even shows at launch that the credential will be sent to the RDG and the RDSH however, the passing of the cred to the RDSH and the user always has to enter the PW one more time in order to login. Any ideas? I have all of the suggested patches and registry entries enabled for credssp, etc.
Hi Damian,
I don’t tend to do much with windows xp as everyone is migrating to newer versions. Are you using Server 2012 RDS as I have seen this before… the RDP 8 protocol is not supported on windows XP. So this could be the issue.
Can you confirm that you have no problems with Win 7 & 8 and you are using RDS 2012.
Best regards,
Hi Ryan
Perhaps you can help with a problem we having on our Win2k12 R2 deployment, we have setup a the 2x RDCB’s with HA, 2x RDSH servers,1x License Server and created a collection called Rd.contoso.com, when trying to access this via rdp we end not been redirected to the SH servers but end up on one of the CB servers. Is there perhaps a registry setting that we are missing to ensure redirection to the RDSH servers?
Our current production TS environment is Windows 2k8 R2 remote desktop servers with round robin (tsfarm)and a single connection broker server. we would like to step up to windows 2012 but this redirection seems to be a stumbling block
any assistance in with this issue is really appreciated
Nick
Are you planning to update this for Windows Server 2012R2 as many of the options I see here are now redundant
Dear Andrew,
This guide applies to both Server 2012 and Server 2012R2.
If you are having troubles, let me know and i will try to assist you.
Best regards,
Can you advise how DNS Round-Robin pointing to the RDSH servers responds when a server is MIA? Can you point the DNS entry to the Connection Broker and it deal out the connections? The way I’ve always understood it, the Connection Broker really only talks to the RDSH servers and analyzes balance or reconnects clients based on previous connection. If you were to just balance DNS Round-Robin and Server 1 was missing, DNS by nature won’t try the second server, will it?
Hello Ryan,
Not sure if I’m posting my questions in the correct place. I’ve been reading your RDS 2012 R2 blogs and they are definitely helpful.
I’m needing some help/guidance.
We are attempting to configure a “simple” RDS 2012 R2 Farm.
One RDS Connection Broker non-HA, with license server (a Standalone Server), and 4 separate RDSH 2012 R2 Servers.
We have configured the Connection Broker “Collection” with the 4 RDSH Servers and called RDSFarm.
We want the users to connect to the 4 RDSH Servers Remote Session Desktops via RDP 3389 (Users are using a Wyse T10D Terminal, but only using the RDSH Desktops not the ThinOS desktops of the Wyse Terminal).
We do not have a RDS Gateway configured, as we do not anticipate the need for remote external connections.
Our DNS has configured the 4 RDSH servers as 192.168.0.101 – 104 and the RDCB as .110.
We have made a DNS RR of the 4 RDSH with the DNS name of RDSFarm.
Couple of questions/issues:
1) Should we be pointing the users directly to the RDCB server?
And if so how do I set this up on the RDCB server?
What I’ve done: I’ve tested pointing users RDP sessions directly to the RDCB (.110) server, however they receive the error that the user does not have access, which makes sense in they don’t have access to the RDCB server.
I see in your instructions that you also use a RDGateway and it would seem to solve this issue, however is RDGateway a requirement for my setup or is it that I simply am missing something?
2) Currently when a user connects via RDP to the RDSFarm (DNS RR), they are requested to login their domain credentials twice.
I’m assuming that this is because they are routed to one RDSH server first via DNS RR and then the RDCB server takes over and reroutes them to a a different RDSH server.
Is there a way I can fix this so they only have to enter credentials once?
3) Does the RDP Client need any configuration in the “Gateway settings” section, perhaps entering in the RDCB server settings?
I hope this makes sense, it’s been difficult to find instructions for simplistic configurations of RDS 2012 R2, I.E. setups without the need for HA, RDGateway, RDWeb, and RDApps.
Thanks for your help,
Anthony
do you still need help with this ?
Hi Ryan,
Yes, still need help with the double (twice) logins of Windows RDS 2012 R2 (4 RDS Host, RDCB & DNS Round Robin) & Dell Wyse T10D Thin Clients.
Thanks for your help,
Anthony
Did you ever find a solution to this?
I’m facing these same issus with D10 and R10 Wyse clients. I’d love to know if there’s an answer. From what I’ve seen, the Wyse terminals can’t successfully navigate a RDCB (they can’t take the redirection). Is there anything I can do. I’m using round robin right now, but just set up through DNS, not through a gateway manager. I have users that try to connect to the farm after about 15 or so users are on the farm, and the system kicks them out immediately with no error as to why. I’m guessing it’s because they all hit RDSH01 before they get redirected.
are referring to 2012 or 2008 R2
We have Server 2012R2 for everything.
Hi Casey,
Did you ever figure out how to resolve the double/twice logins with RDS Windows 2012 R2 and Dell Wyse Thin Clients?
Thanks,
Anthony
Hello Ryan.
We have setup a the 2x RDCB’s with HA, 2x RDSH servers,and created a collection , when trying to access this via rdp we end not been redirected to the SH servers but end up on one of the CB servers. Is there any GPO settings?
are you attempting to test with admin creds
Ryan i solved this problem, but now i have another after creating collection on SH servers appears error
there are no broker servers on pool.
before creation of collection there are no such problem.
So I followed along with these instructions and now whenever I login to my RDSH farm or either of my RD Host servers individually I always get a temporary profile. Is there somewhere that I might have screwed up the configuration, any help as to where I can look would be great.
Also whenever I try to create a collection I add both of my host servers but it’s unable to detect any of the applications I have installed on one of the host servers. Which leads me to a final question, is it necessary to install the applications we want to present on both Host servers?
Yes, you would need to have the same application on both servers. This will then work as a farm rather than a single point of failure. As for the temporary profile, are you logging on using the admin account or a user account ?
Are you using User profile disks or a manual configuration using two session hosts and a DNS round robin for the farm ?
Hi Ryan,
I have configured RRDNS but have a slightly different problem. if I generate an RDP link from RDWEB, I can connect happily to the farm (we have 2 session brokers and 1 connection broker), but, if I just launch an RDP connection and give the connection brokers name as the target (the same as the RDWEB generated link) I just get to logon to the connection broker. I can’t see where I’m going wrong, we’re running 2012R2 on the servers and I’m trying to logon from either a 2012R2 host or a Windows 8.1 host. Any pointers?
are you logging in as a Admin ?
we have a HA environment all the way.
2 rdweb, 2 rdcb and 2 RDGW servers.
Is it neccessary to “configure a farm” or is it enough to add the RDCB?
If your using the RDweb then I would recommended to use RDCB. There are limitations when using a load balancer as you would need to point the collection to the VS on the load balancer. It all depends on what you are doing.
Hi we are using a rdp file from a desktop.
In the future they need to access it from the internet.
so both i guess.
but i am unable to figure out, if i need the “Farm” with all the RDSH dns names
Anthony, did you ever figure out your situation? I have the same issue.
Ryan,
I have 6 session hosts. In DNS I create rdcb a records for each host. I want to build a farm, so I ran thru the steps above and I set each host to allow 4 connections. The 5th user does not get pushed to another host. The 5 user is getting an error that there are too many users logged in. In creating the round robin server farm. On top of the 6 rdcb entries I created, do I need to create 6 rdsh entries and then group them into the RAP policy?
Your using DNS round robin which is very unreliable. I would suggest you use freeloadbalancer.com and test using that.
Hey Ryan,
I know this article is old. But I have a scenario for you.
We have a 3 server RDS setup.
RD GAteway and RD Broker = Rdbroker.ad.domain.com
RDS1 – RD Session Host – rds1.ad.domain.com
RDS2 – RD Session Host – rds2.ad.domain.com
We are having an issue with the load balancing.
In our DNS we have a forward lookup zone defined as remote.domain.com and we have added A records for both RDSH (192.168.100.17 & 192.168.100.14)
Our problem was when we shut down RDS1 the entire thing stopped working.
Sounds like DNS round robin is not configured correctly. Have you tried using the free KEMP Loadmaster?
No we have not.
From my understanding the load-balancing in 2012 R2 and 2016 is done via RDBroker and the weight settings under the collection, so DNS Round Robin shouldn’t really be necessary, is my assumption correct? Should I just follow this article to make sure the DNS round robin is correct?
The only thing that differs from our setup to yours is we have a Forward Lookup ZOne named “remote.domain.com and under that Zone we had the two A records for the servers ( 192.168.100.17 & 192.168.100.14). Does that seem right?
I also forgot to mention all 3 servers are 2016.
The connection broker is responsible for handling session host connections and reconnections. Round robin is relevant for the connection brokers and other RDS core infra. are your servers duel roles ( connection brokers also session hosts ?) If you have one Connection broker you would not use DNS round robin. It would help if you provided a little bit of detail on your setup.