RDS 2012 Connection Broker and round robin DNS?

Hi,
I have a set-up with three session host servers and one of them is also a connection broker. Round robin DNS is configured for the three servers and the clients, who are all on our internal networks, can connect just fine to the farm name. My
questions is, is there any point in having round robin configured since the connections still need to go through the CB? Could i just have one DNS-record for the farm name pointing to the CB? My initial though was that round robin would add
redundancy, but does it realy? I've tried to find answers on this but none of the articles and posts i've found are realy clear to me.
Quite often the initial connection for clients is slow and my theory is that it's caused by the RR DNS records.

Hi,
Thank you for posting in Windows Server Forum.
I think we need to have DNS RR entries for our RDS environment because DNS RR will be used by RDP clients to connect to the RD Connection Broker servers. Once when we allowed the entries of all server to DNS RR, when there is alternate connection need to capture
for following server it will provided by DNS RR.
During the connection process, the end nodes (RDVH, RDSH, RDWA) will get configured with all the RD Connection Broker server names, and they will randomly choose one to connect to. The RDP clients will use the DNS Round Robin name configured to connect to the
RD Connection Broker servers randomly.
More information.
RD Connection Broker High Availability in Windows Server 2012
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2012/06/27/rd-connection-broker-high-availability-in-windows-server-2012.aspx
Hope it helps!
Thanks.
Dharmesh Solanki
TechNet Community Support

Similar Messages

RDS 2012 Connection Broker and Web Access in different domains

Hello!
I'm trying to add Web Access (WA) server to RDS 2012 Deployment. WA server and other servers in Deployment are in different domains (in different forests with 2-way forest trust).
WA server was added to Deployment
successfully without any warnings.
We have many applications published but in this new WA server there are no application icons in Rdweb page at all.
There is nothing interesting in logs on WA server as well as on Connection broker servers.
Is this design
acceptable? Which additional actions are needed to make application icons visible?

Hi,
Please refer below links and cross verify the Web Acess server settings.
http://blog.kristinlgriffin.com/2010/03/rd-web-access-is-emply.html
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5974.the-case-of-invisible-remoteapp-programs-a-k-a-no-remoteapp-programs-listed-on-rd-web-access-site.aspx
Regards,
Manjunath Sullad

RD Web Access / RD Connection Broker - NLB/Round Robin or both?

Hi
Can someone point me to documentation that can assist with Infrastructure scaling and HA config of the RD Web Access/RD CB roles?
We have a successful PoC consisting of RD Web and RD CB on a single server (no GW required as we're using UAG) and several hosts. Now looking to port to production, thinking of scalability and HA. Looking to serve 300-750 users.
Thinking so far:
RD Web Access role across 2 servers using NLB
RD Connection Broker across 2 servers - (maybe same as Web Access machines?) But CB appears to operate using DNS Round robin. (https://msfreaks.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/windows-2012-r2-remote-desktop-services-part-2/)?
Can CB use NLB?
Which is preferred for the CB role, NLB or DNS round robin?
Cheers
Lea

Thanks Amy, they're really useful links. Why is it so hard to find these....or even an implementation/scaling guide for 2012?
TP - you are my hero, thanks for answering so many of my posts :-)
I was hoping RD Connection Brokers supported NLB as I've also read this is a far superior technology (see below). Here's my architecture thinking:
1. Install the CB role on two individual servers
2. Add NLB to the CBs
3. Follow
here , here and thanks Amy
here for SQL and HA mode (we run Full SQL on an independent server)
Question(s):
a. If SQL is not using AlwaysOn and therefore an SPF, what are the consequences of SQL outage? Does RDS fail completely?
b. If SQL is an SPF, is it worth enabling HA for CB presumably to gain load balancing? This
is a fascinating graph that would suggest little need based on latency for our farm of 20 or so hosts! All servers are on VMware 5.5 therefore inherent redundancy.
We may still choose HA but possibly for MS patching reasons such the farm (minus SQL server) can be patched without downtime...
I found this NLB/RRDNS description useful also
Network Load Balancing is superior to other software solutions such as round robin DNS (RRDNS), which distributes
workload among multiple servers but does not provide a mechanism for server availability. If a server within the host fails, RRDNS, unlike Network Load Balancing, will continue to send it work until a network administrator detects the failure and removes the
server from the DNS address list. This results in service disruption for clients. Network Load Balancing also has advantages over other load balancing solutions—both hardware- and software-based—that introduce single points of failure or performance bottlenecks
by using a centralized dispatcher. Because Network Load Balancing has no proprietary hardware requirements, any industry-standard compatible computer can be used. This provides significant cost savings when compared to proprietary hardware load balancing solutions.
Thanks again
Lea

RDS 2012 Connection Broker HA - DNS RR or NLB?

I'm setting up a new RDS 2012 farm and I need very high availability. I'm deciding on how to configure the connection broker HA. I have 2 server VMs that will be the gateway, rdweb, and conn brokers. The Microsoft article you have probably seen
RD Connection Broker High Availability in Windows Server 2012 recommends using DNS RR. And the standard
recommendation for the rd gateway is to use Windows NLB.
I'm a little perplexed as to why you would use DNS RR when you have a much more robust solution available with NLB. You are already setting up NLB for the gateway, so why would you use what I would say is an inferior choice with dns rr for the conn broker?
The main issue I see is that if one of the cluster servers is offline, dns rr will at least 50% of the time point clients to a broker that's not available. With NLB, it's aware of the server being down and will point all clients to the one that's online.
Am I missing something? Does anyone using NLB for conn broker have any input good or bad? Thanks much in advance...

You need to read that:
http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vdi-articles/general/remote-desktop-server-farms-explained-part1.html
And when you said "at least 50% of the time" don't forget the client DNS cache.

Rds 2012 r2 - Connection Broker - Round Robin DNS

I am working on building a 2012 r2 RDS setup with 2 session hosts, a web app, and a CB. We are currently using 2008 r2 in a rds farm setup that is working perfectly, but wanted to get some of the enhancements in 2012 r2.. so that is why i am going
down this path.
It sounds like when doing reading, is that we can no longer just drop the fqdn of the dns rr of the session hosts in the RDP client and it will connect. Instead we need to log onto the web access portal and connect that way? I tried the DNS RR
to point to the session hosts, and that seemed to work, but had issues when disconnecting and reconnecting it would push me to another session host.
Is there a way to get it back to using DNS RR and the session broker work like it did in 2008 r2? I feel like end users are going to struggle when working from home and setting up a RDP client. Or do i just not use the connection broker and use a Load
Balancer like HA PRoxy?
The documentation is very lacking on RDS on the new os...
Thanks in advance for any advice

Hi James,
Thank you for posting in Windows Server Forum.
From Server 2012\R2 we normally have initial connections going to the broker and not to our RDSH server directly as previously for server 2008 R2. Yeah we can use DNS RR for your RDS environment but with DNS RR is that it is unaware if the server is online
or offline while my load balancer is service aware. So in case of a problem with a connection broker the request will be redirected to the active connection broker thanks to my load balancer. DNS RR does not have this feature. So it’s good idea if you can
use NLB or any 3rd party Load balancer for web and gateway services. You can refer
this thread for information.
Hope it helps!
Thanks.
Dharmesh Solanki
TechNet Community Support

Confused by RDS Connection Broker and DNS

Hi,
I'm setting up the following in my lab to test before a production deployment:
RDSH01 - RD Session Host 1
RDSH02 - RD Session Host 2
RDSH03 - RD Session Host 3
RDSBG - RD Connection Broker
Everything seems to work great if I point my RDP client at one of the session hosts via a DNS round robin, it redirects me to whatever server has my disconnected sessions on and new sessions get put on servers with the least connections, great, however,
I have the following questions...
I've read on other threads that I should be pointing my RDP client at the Broker, not at a Round Robin DNS containing the Session hosts. That said, its working just connecting to the hosts and redirecting and load balancing accordingly. Is this
the right approach? (I've got RDS.domain.local pointing at RDSH01, RDSH02 and RDSH03)
I'm currently using a Self Signed Cert for RDS.domain.local which is great when initially connecting, however when I get redirected to another host it comes up with a warning for eg. RDSH02.domain.local as the Session Hosts have no certs on them.
From what I've read, you don't need to put certs on every Session Host as the connection goes via the broker but when I connect to the broker I get told I'm not authorised, I can only connect to the Session Hosts.
What am I missing here?
Many thanks,
Dave

Thanks, I'll do that when I get to the live environment. The client has 10 thin clients already at a remote location using a single RDSH directly, they're Windows 7 Embedded with the RDP update so I'll tweak them with the load balance details.
As for R2, unfortunately we put the order through too early for R2 and have no SA, I tried to blag an upgrade through our MS account manager but he couldn't help as the prices have gone up so we'd have to go back to distribution and re-order :(
The client is coming from a very old physical 2003 environment which hasn't been touched in years, the current 2012 RDS is 100x better than their full far desktop experience so we'll be fine. Its 80 users over 3 RDSH's with 32Gb RAM on each although
I may increase that as we have more in the pot. Basically 3 VMware hosts on the front of an Equallogic, each with 64Gb RAM.
I will need to have a look at HA RDCB but that just introduces a single point of failure on the SQL box, so would have to do that too, seems overkill, can I just remove the RDSH's from the collection and run without the broker if it dies and rebuild the
collection with a new broker?
How many SAN's will I need on my cert, I've got memories of having to make multiple requests the first time I did exchange years ago.
Think I'll write a step by step guide for this, I've looked at loads and most on the web don't cover the little details, just the main steps which are kinda obvious.

Round robin DNS for load balancing between multiple network adapters (Xserve)

I'm attempting to use 'round robin' DNS to load balance between the two ethernet adapters of an Xserve.
Both ethernet adapters are connected to the same LAN and have static IP addresses of 192.168.2.250 and 192.168.2.251.
The DNS zone for the server's local domain/host (macserver.private) has a machine record with both IP addresses (set up in the Lion Server UI).
Having read up on round robin DNS, I would have expected DNS requests for 'macserver.private' to be answered with the two IP addresses ordered at random, achiving my aim of requests being served at random via each ethernet adapter.
However this doesn't seem to be the case. Doing a 'nslookup' from any of the network clients results in the two IP addresses being listed in the same order everytime. And pinging 'macserver.private' only ever results in a response from the same address.
Does anyone know why this is the case? Does Lion Server use a non-standard DNS configuration? Are there any additional settings I need to configure in Lion's DNS server to make adopt a round robin approach to responding to requests?
Thanks in advance for any help!

Be careful what you wish for
Round Robin DNS is rarely the best option for 'load balancing'. At the very least it's subject to caching at various point on the network - even at the client side, once the client looks up the address it will cache that response - this means that subsequent lookups may be served from the client's cache and not refer back to the server. Therfore any given client will always see the same address until the cache expires.
I suspect this is what you're seeing.
You can minimize this by setting a lower TTL on the records. This should result in the response being cached for a shorter period, meaning the client will make more requests to the server, with a higher change of using the 'other' address.
However, you're also going to run into issues with the server having two interfaces/addresses in the same LAN. This isn't recommended.
As Jonathon mentioned, you may be better off just bonding the two interfaces. This will provide an automatic level of dynamic load balancing without the latency of DNS caches, as well as automatic failover should one link fail (as opposed to round robin DNS which will cause 50% of requests to fail until the client cache expires and a new lookup is performed (and, even then, there's still a chance the client will try to use the failed link).

Server 2012 R2 RDS- Only want the Session Host, Connection Broker and Licensing Server!

Hi all,
Wondering if anyone has experience with implementing Remote Desktop Services (RDS) on Windows Server 2012 R2.
I am doing an RDS design for a platform where we only need an RDS Session Host, Licensing Server and Connection Broker. We do not need web access as these servers will simply be jump boxes internally!
However, implementing this correctly in our test environment has proved to be tricky. The options are:
Use the Server Manager and do a traditional install via Roles and Features ( specifically add the Session Host, Licensing Server and Connection Broker). The installation process seems to go through ok in this scenario but when I head over to the Remote
Desktop Services section of the Server Manager I simply get the message 'An RDS Deployment does not exist in the server pool. To create a deployment head to Roles and Features'.
Use the specific ‘Remote Desktop Services installation’ option on the Server Manager and do a Session Based Desktop deployment and Quick Start. This installation process seems to go through correctly and the Remote Desktop Section seems to be working
correctly via the Server Manager. However this process is ‘hard locked’ i.e. it installs the session host, web access and connection broker. I can then remove the web access component later from Roles/ Features.
Is there a best practice (if any) for installation? i.e. Will there be any issues down the line if I remove RDS Web Access from my server while following method 2?
There is a complete lack of documentation from Microsoft here so not sure what to do! Just need a basic RDS session based deployment.

Hi,
As I know from server 2012\R2 the best deployment skill is to perform via “Remote Desktop Services” installation mode with Standard deployment and don’t let single role to install. Because when we install through RDS mode, there are specific extra tools and
services activated along with that deployment which you can’t find with single role installation. And that is for sure, when we install RDS role as of this, by default we will get install RDCB, RDSH and RDWA role installed.
Sorry don’t have any option to try to remove that role as that role basically needed for RemoteApp and Desktop purpose. But if you want then you can try it with help of “Remove-RDServer”Powershell command.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj215506.aspx
Hope it helps!
Thanks.
Dharmesh Solanki
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected]

Relation between RD Connection broker and RD session host farm in 2012 R2

Good Day
I have configured standard RDS session based deployment recently on 2012 R2 servers
Everything is working as expected
The setup has TWO RD Session host, 1 Session Broker, one RD Web access and one RD Gateway
I have created 2 DNS records named Rdsfarm.domain.com for my RDS1 and RDS2 session host servers and if I connect to this
rdsfarm.domain.com with RDP from TS clients, i am able to connect to any one of TWO rds servers without any problem
However some part is not clear to me
I have not added rdsfarm.domain.com any where except my RD Gateway server RAP policy
Also I have added my RD Broker server in RAP allowed group above.
I don't see any config where this farm name is associated with my RD Broker server
I have tried to connect to RD broker server from client, but it didn't redirect me to RD session host servers
If I try to connect to my RDS servers with their FQDN , it gives me error that I must connect thru farm name
Can you please help me to understand relation between RD session host servers farm and RD broker server ?
Also I would like to know what exactly happens in background when user start RDP session by entering RDS farm name
Note that RDS farm name is generic DNS Host(A) record pointing to my both RD session host servers
I wanted to know is there any command or configuration I missed out as I don't see any config where Generic RD Session Host Farm name (DNS Host(A) record) is associated with my RD Broker server ?
Thanks
Best Regards
Mahesh

Hi,
If you are opening Remote Desktop Connection and manually connecting to the broker then it will not work properly because you have no way of specifying the target collection in the user interface. If manually using the RD Client to connect is a requirement
what you can do is set the default collection in the RD Connection Broker server's registry.
To specify the default collection, please create the registry setting below in the broker's registry:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\ClusterSettings
DefaultTsvUrl REG_SZ tsv://vmresource.1.<VDI pool ID>
To determine the correct value for DefaultTsvUrl please open RDWeb in a non-IE web browser and click on the icon for the collection you would like to be the default, then edit the downloaded rdp file with Notepad and copy the portion of the loadbalanceinfo
setting that is similar to the above.
An alternative would be to download the .rdp file from RD Web Access and double-click it to connect.
As I mentioned above it is generally intended to have users connect via RD Web Access or RemoteApp and Desktop Connections feed or Remote Resources (uses the feed) so that the client will obtain the proper .rdp file from the server.
To configure the FQDN that is published in the .rdp files you can use the cmdlet below:
Change published FQDN for Server 2012 or 2012 R2 RDS Deployment
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Change-published-FQDN-for-2a029b80
Below is a sample configuration based on what you have written:
1. Published FQDN (using cmdlet above): rdsfarm.domain.com --> points to ip address of RDCB server. When launching a RemoteApp or Full Desktop connection from RD Web Access, the prompt window will show this FQDN next to Remote computer.
2. Gateway FQDN: gateway.domain.com --> externally points to public ip address of your RD Gateway server. TCP port 443 and UDP port 3391 need to be forwarded to the RDG's internal ip address. When launching a RemoteApp or Full Desktop
connection from RD Web Access, the prompt window will show this FQDN next to Gateway server. This FQDN is set in Server Manager -- RDS -- Overview -- Deployment Properties -- RD Gateway tab.
In RD Gateway Manager -- Properties of RD RAP -- Network Resources tab you should select Allow user to connect to any network resource or define a RD Gateway-managed group that has all of the FQDNs that the user will need to connect to.
3. RD Web Access FQDN: remote.domain.com --> internally points to the ip address of your RDWeb server, externally points to the public ip address of your RDWeb server. This is the name you give users if they want to use RD Web, for example,
https://remote.domain.com/rdweb
If you want users to manually connect using Remote Desktop Client as well as use RDWeb it will be a bit confusing to them since they will need to use one FQDN when manually using the client and a different FQDN when using RDWeb. You could fix this
by having them only use one method or run RDWeb directly on the RDCB server, that way users would only need to know a single FQDN for both RDWeb and manual connections.
4. You should have a wildcard certificate with subject of *.domain.com set for all RDS purposes in Deployment Properties.
Thanks.
-TP

Connection broker and RemoteApp manager role on the same server OK?

Hello. I may have what seems to be a strange request here. I have a currently working 3 node TS farm consisting of 2 Terminal Servers with the RemoteApp role on them and 1 server running the connection broker. All is running fine but the RemoteApps I have
published are prohibited to have the clipboard enabled for them due to PCI DSS compliance. I wanted to install some other apps and have the clipboard enabled but since it seems that the clipboard is a server setting and not a per app setting, I was hoping
to just install these apps right on the server running the connection broker vs building a separate new TS server to host them. These other apps do not need to be in the load balanced environment.
Can I just install the RemoteApp role on the CB server without any interruption to the farm?
Thanks,
Joe

Hi Joe,
Thank you for your comment.
Can you let me the OS version of RDS Server?
For better understanding, I can explain you that; RemoteApp is not a role which you need to install. But you need to install RD Web access role and then you can publish RemoteApp through that. For eg. If you are using Server 2012\R2 then you need to create
a collection and after that you can publish the RemoteApp feature which you or your user can use through RD Web Access.
As per your comment you have already TS role installed, then you can install RD Web access through role based installation, select the role and server on which you want to install it. Please refer beneath article if you have server 2008 r2.
Remote Desktop Web Access (RD Web Access)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731923.aspx
Hope it helps!
Thanks,
Dharmesh

RDS 2012- connect to session collection trough mstsc.exe on XP SP3

Hi!! i need to connect to a session collection based on rds 2012 directly trough mstsc.exe on xp sp3 clients... xp don't support remoteapp and desktop connection and my users can't use internet explorer to connect trough rd web Access..
Thanks!

Hi,
What you could do is upgrade Windows XP with the latest Remote Desktop Client available for Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969084)
Then extract the .RDP file you want from the RDS 2012 environment (or specify the properties manually in a .RDP) file.
Recently I wrote on article on the distribution of Remote Apps and desktops in Windows Server 2012, that might be useful:
http://virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vdi-articles/general/distribution-of-remote-apps-and-desktops-in-windows-server-2012.html
Also, more info on the .RDP properties specifically needed for RDS 2012:
http://microsoftplatform.blogspot.nl/2012/04/rd-connection-broker-ha-and-rdp.html
Kind regards,
Freek Berson
The Microsoft Platform
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Wortell company website

Exchange 2013 CAS - Round Robin DNS not working properly

I have exchange 2013 server (2MB, 2CAS) server. I created two dns records for mail.test.com, autodiscover.test.com pointing to my two CAS servers.
But the problem is if i switched of one cas server, client outlook not connecting automatically to other CAS server. By restarting the outlook also its not working. By restarting the system or running the command ipconfig /flushdns in command prompt, it
working.
is there any configuration iam missing, please advice how to achieve decent load balancing in Exchange 2013 CAS without going for third party Loadbalancer...

I have exchange 2013 server (2MB, 2CAS) server. I created two dns records for mail.test.com, autodiscover.test.com pointing to my two CAS servers.
But the problem is if i switched of one cas server, client outlook not connecting automatically to other CAS server. By restarting the outlook also its not working. By restarting the system or running the command ipconfig /flushdns in command prompt, it
working.
is there any configuration iam missing, please advice how to achieve decent load balancing in Exchange 2013 CAS without going for third party Loadbalancer...
If a CAS role server is down or unable to service clients, you have to remove it from DNS round-robin consideration manually. There is no health check with DNS round-robin unlike a true load balancer.
Also, I would set the TTL to a low value for the CAS servers in the round-robin.
Twitter!: Please Note: My Posts are provided “AS IS” without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied.

What ports to open between Connection broker and Web access hosts

I have setup a 4 node 2008 R2 RDS farm (1 connection broker, 1 Web access, and 2 session hosts.) They were all built from the same image, but the web access and connection broker will not talk to each other. They are all on the same subnet, and ips are x.x.x.200-203 The Web access server can ping the Sesions hosts, the session hosts can ping each other, web access and the connection broker. But the Web access and Connection broker cant ping each other. I turned off the windows firewall and they can ping, and connect... So whats ports does it need open?
Thanks!
~M

Hello,
Do you need any further helps? Please let us know it. Thanks.
· Lionel Chen
TechNet Subscriber Support in forum
If you have any feedback on our support, please [email protected]
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

RDS 2012 - Connection issues when selecting "This is a private Computer"

We recently cutover our corporate RDS system the Windows 2012 version and it was pretty smooth, only few issue that where resolved quickly. In the last 3 weeks I nave had 4 differnet users working from home on personal WIndows 7 system that
they use to connect to their computer in the office using Windows 2012 RDS telling me that they can't connect any longer. Doing some basic troubleshooting I discovered that if they select the option on the RDS Webaccess page "This is a private computer'
they can't connect to their computer in the office. If they select "This is a public or shared computer" It works fine.
Anyone seen this before???
Joe Gomez

Hello,
Thanks for your response.
1. Windows Server 2012
2. it appears that it is connecting then it times out after about 30-40 second.
3. "Remote Desktop can't connect to the remote computer for one of the these resons:"
Remote access to the server is not enabled.
The remote computer is turned off.
The remote computer is not avalible on the network.
Make sure the remote computer is turned on and is connected to the network and that remote access is enabled.
4. I will try the a non customized RDWEB page.
5. Our users have a range of RDP clinet version, I will make sure that these having the problem are on 6.3.9600
6. Yes they use the Connect to Remote PC feature to connect to a physical PC in the office.
This worked fine in the Windows 2008R2 RDS environment. The new RDS 2012 we started to see this.
Thanks
Joe
Joe Gomez

EXS24 question on keyswitching and round robin

I imported a Giga patch into EXS24, and the Giga patch imported two groups which are keyswitches.
However, I don't want to keyswitch between them. I'd like EXS to alternate between the two groups. In Kontakt-speak, this is called round robin.
How can I get that to work? I scoured the plug-in reference manual and found nada.

It's not a well-detailed item, but EXS can do it. (It's also called "Round Robin" in Gigastudio.)
Let's say your zones have been assigned to two groups, "Clarinet Staccato 1" and "Clarinet Staccato 2," and you want them to alternate every time they're played to lessen the machine gun effect.
Load the instrument. Click "Edit" in the EXS plug-in window.
Enable the viewing of "Select by" for groups.
For Clarinet Staccato 1, set "Select by" to "Group:" Now assign the Group to "---start---"
For Clarinet Staccato 2, set "Select by" to "Group:" and assign group to "Clarinet Staccato 1."
In other words, one group "starts", and the other plays the next keystroke after the first group has been heard.

RDS 2012 Connection Broker and round robin DNS?

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