Benny Tritsch's Ignite session is now available here! This session highlights Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Remote Desktop Services from the perspective of an independent subject matter expert. Join Benny Tritsch as he shares his experience from real-world RDS projects and his thoughts about the potential Windows Server 2016 has for your desktop virtualization and session remoting use cases. Get in-depth information on how good the RDS 2016 end-user experience is and learn how to measure it yourself, both on-premises and on Microsoft Azure. Other important topics discussed in this session are RDS 2016 management concepts (administrator experience) and the known [...]

Microsoft is busy at work pushing out some new documentation on RDS deployment and upgrading in Windows 2016 (and much of it is instruction for Azure deployments).  Here is starting point: Deploy a basic desktop hosting environment using Azure IaaS Deploy a Storage Spaces Direct scale-out file server for UPD storage in Azure Upgrade your RDS deployment to Windows Server 2016. Configure your desktop hosting environment. Deploy a desktop hosting environment. Deploy a Remote Desktop Session Host farm to improve availability. Deploy a Remote Desktop Connection Broker cluster. Deploy a RD Web Access and Gateway farm. Deploy RemoteApp programs. Deploy [...]

At a client we noticed that after our last round of patching the RD Web Access web feed broke.  All of our servers run 2012 R2.  The broken feed was evident on Windows 8.1 and 10 PCs/laptops that connected using RemoteApp and Desktop Connection and also on iPads (makes sense because these all use the feed). Removing KB3098785 fixed this for us (Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6) Note: Our RD Web Access server is also running RD Gateway. I have not tested whether the RD Web Access feed breaks on a server with only RD Web Access installed.

I have observed the RD Gateway Manager console crash specifically when you go to add a CAP or RAP policy.  For me, the .NET Framework 4.6.1 update KB3102467 was to blame. Here's the fix. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3162871

I have a customer for whom this is a real pain point so hopefully this will help some of you. They have an RDS environment with Office 365 (Office 2013) click-to-run. Outlook 2013 for them started crashing all over the place. We were getting this event in the application logs on all RD Session Host servers: Log Name:      Application Source:        Application Error Date:          5/4/2016 3:28:41 PM Event ID:      1000 Task Category: (100) Level:         Error Keywords:      Classic User:          N/A Computer:      rdsh.domain.com Description: Faulting application name: OUTLOOK.EXE, version: 15.0.4815.1000, time stamp: 0x56e79eae Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.3.9600.18194, time stamp: 0x569515fc Exception [...]

Working with small and medium sized businesses, we often use the Server Manager's Remote Desktop Management Services (RMDS) UI to manage RDS deployments.  The problem is that this UI is not without issues. We frequently run into problems using this tool.  Because it bombs for many reasons, we decided to write a series of blogs posts that detail the problems we run into using RDMS and how to fix them. RDMS Problem #1: The Server Pool Does not Match the RD Connection Brokers That Are In It Environment: Windows Server 2012 R2 deployment One Session Collection RD Connection Broker is [...]

In this companion video to the RDS Gurus Step-by-Step Guide for Building an FSLogix Apps 2.1 Lab Environment, Benny shows the power and simplicity of application masking on an Azure RDS IaaS environment. Watch the video here.

Per-user app publishing for Azure RemoteApp is out in preview! Check it out here. To participate in the preview you have to fill out the survey.