What’s New in Remote Desktop Services

Remote Desktop Services introduced a VDI deployment in Windows Server 2008 R2. In Windows Server 2012, Remote Desktop Services includes new ways to efficiently configure and manage your virtual desktops. Some of the enhancements include:

• Unified central experience – Deploy VDI quickly, and then manage your pooled and personal virtual desktop deployments through a new unified central experience.
  
  
• Automated and simple single-image management – Take advantage of automated ways to deploy and manage pooled virtual desktops with a virtual desktop template.
  
  
• User personalization – Preserve user personalization settings for pooled virtual desktop deployments by using user profile disks.
  
  
• Less expensive storage – Use inexpensive local storage with live migration functionality between host computers for pooled virtual desktops. Personal virtual desktops can use the less expensive SMB central storage.
  
  

In Windows Server 2012, Session Virtualization deployment in Remote Desktop Services includes new ways to efficiently configure and manage your session-based desktops. In earlier versions of Remote Desktop Services, ongoing management of the RD Session Host servers is performed at a per server level. By using a Session Virtualization deployment scenario, centralized management and installation is enabled. Session Virtualization in Windows Server 2012 offers the following benefits:

• Unified central experience – In Windows Server 2012, you can deploy Session Virtualization quickly and manage your deployments through a new unified central experience.
  
  
• Simplified and centralized deployment – Simple scenario-based installations allow you to create an entire session collection at one time.
  
  
• User personalization – User profile disks allow you to preserve user personalization settings for your session collections.
  
  
• Centralized and unified management – Manage all of the RD Session Host servers in your session collection from a single location.
  
  
• Fairshare experience – For a predictable user experience in Windows Server 2012 and to ensure that one user does not negatively impact the performance of another user’s session, the following features are enabled by default on RD Session Host servers:
  
  
  • Network Fairshare – Dynamically distributes available bandwidth across sessions based on the number of active sessions to enable equal bandwidth utilization.
    
    
  • Disk Fairshare – Prevents sessions from over utilizing disk usage by equal distribution of disk I/O among sessions.
    
    
  • CPU Fairshare – Dynamically distributes processor time across sessions based on the number of active sessions and load on these sessions. This was introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2 and has been improved for heavier loads in Windows Server 2012.
    
    

A Session Virtualization deployment consists of RD Session Host servers along with infrastructure servers, such as RD Licensing, RD Connection Broker, RD Gateway, and RD Web Access servers.

A session collection (referred to as a farm in earlier versions of Windows Server) is a grouping of RD Session Host servers for a given session. A session collection is used to publish one of the following resources:

• Session-based desktops
  
  
• RemoteApp programs
  
  

Session Virtualization is a scenario-based installation within Server Manager that allows you to install, configure, and manage RD Session Host servers from a central location. With the Session Virtualization deployment scenario, you’re presented with two deployment types:

• Quick Start: Installs all the necessary Remote Desktop Services role services on one computer to enable you to install and configure Remote Desktop Services role services in a test environment.
  
  
• Standard deployment: Allows you to flexibly deploy the various Remote Desktop Services role services on different servers.
  
  

In Windows Server 2008 R2, publishing and managing applications on both pooled and personal virtual desktops is a very time-consuming and costly process. Because RemoteApp programs only partially integrate with the native Windows® experience, they add to the management cost since there is no way to organize published RemoteApp programs to users.

Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2012 enables you to publish and manage resources, such as RemoteApp programs, session-based desktops, and virtual desktops, from a centralized console. Using this new publishing feature, you can get an historic view of resources assigned to end users, change published resources for any given collection, and edit properties of published resources.

In addition to the centralized console, you can now configure a RemoteApp and Desktop Connection URL by using Group Policy, and then give users access to the URL automatically through an email address.

Centralized resource publishing provides end users with an experience that can replace locally installed applications.

Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 and Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 introduced Microsoft RemoteFX, which enables the delivery of a full Windows user experience to a range of client devices, including rich clients, thin clients, and ultrathin clients. Windows Server 2012 builds on this platform to enable a richer and more seamless experience on all types of networks and devices. Specifically, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) enables a consistent user experience when connecting to centralized workspaces even on networks where bandwidth is limited and latency is high.

Following are the key benefits for end users and IT professionals in using RDP in Windows 8 for their centralized workspace deployments.

Remote Desktop Services is a server role that consists of several role services. In Windows Server 2012, Remote Desktop Services consists of the following role services:

For a list of deprecated features, see Features Removed or Deprecated in the Windows Server Developer Preview.

The following table provides additional resources for evaluating Remote Desktop Services.