Term/Abbreviation

Description

RAS Console

Parallels RAS Console.

The RAS console is the primary interface you use to configure, manage, and run Parallels RAS. As an administrator, you use the RAS console to manage farms, sites, RD Session Hosts, published resources, client connections, etc.

Category

In the RAS console, categories are displayed in the left pane of the main window. Each category consists of a number of settings related to a specific task or operation.

The categories include Start, Farm, Load Balancing, Publishing, Universal Printing, Universal Scanning, Connection, Client Manager, and others.

Farm

A Parallels RAS farm is a logical grouping of objects for the purpose of centralized management. A farm configuration is stored in a single database which contains information about all objects comprising the farm.

A farm consists of at least one site, but may have as many sites as necessary.

Site

A site consists of at least one RAS Publishing Agent, RAS Secure Client Gateway (or multiple gateways), and RAS agents installed on RD Session Hosts, VDI hosts, and Windows PCs. Note that a given RD  Session Host, VDI host, or PC can be a member of only one site at any given time.

Licensing Site

The site that manages Parallels RAS licenses in a Parallels RAS farm. By default, the server on which you install Parallels RAS becomes the Licensing Site. If you create additional sites later, you can designate any one of them as the Licensing Site.

There can be only one Licensing Site in a given farm. All other sites are called secondary sites.

Note: Parallels RAS updates or upgrades must be applied to the Licensing Site first.

RAS Secure Client Gateway

RAS Secure Client Gateway tunnels all traffic needed by applications on a single port and provides secure connections.

HTML5 Client

HTML5 client allows users to view and launch remote applications and desktops in a web browser. The HTML5 client functionality is a part of RAS Secure Client Gateway.

Publishing

The act of making items installed on a Remote Desktop Server, VDI host or Remote PC available to the users via Parallels RAS.

RAS Publishing Agent

RAS Publishing Agent provides load balancing of published applications and desktops.

RAS RD Session Host Agent

RAS RD Session Host Agent collects information from the MS RDS hosts required by the Publishing Agent and transmits to it when required.

Remote PC Agent

Remote PC Agent collects information from Remote PC hosts required by the Publishing Agent and transmits to it when required.

RAS Guest Agent

RAS Guest Agent collects information from the VDI desktop required by RAS Publishing Agent and transmits to it when required.

RAS VDI Agent

RAS VDI Agent collects information from the Parallels RAS Infrastructure and is responsible for controlling VDI through its native API. It also acts as a gateway between a RAS Secure Client Gateway, or the client in direct mode, and an RDP server from the guest VM or VDI depending on a VDI implementation.

RAS VDI Agent is a part of RAS Publishing Agent, so it is installed when you install the Publishing Agent. This built-in RAS VDI Agent can be used to control multiple VDI hosts in a Parallels RAS farm.

You can also install a dedicated RAS VDI Agent on a particular VDI host and use it to control that host only. See RAS VDI Agent dedicated below.

RAS VDI Agent dedicated

This RAS VDI Agent appears as an installation option in the Parallels RAS installer. It serves the same purpose as the built-in RAS VDI Agent described above. The difference is, you can only use a dedicated agent to control the VDI host on which it is installed. VDI configurations are described in detail in the VDI chapter.

RDS

Remote Desktop Services is a Microsoft Windows component that makes applications and the entire desktop of a server running RDS accessible to a remote client device that supports Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).  RDS replaced Terminal Services beginning with Windows 2008 R2.

HALB

High Availability Load Balancing (HALB) is an appliance that provides load balancing for RAS Secure Client Gateways. Parallels HALB virtual appliance is available for the following hypervisors: Hyper-V, VMware, Citrix Hypervisor. HALB deployment is per site, which means that the same HALB deployment cannot be shared between sites. Multiple HALB deployments can run simultaneously, one acting as the master and others as slaves. The more HALB deployments a site has, the lower the probability that end users will experience downtime. Master and slave HALB deployments share a common or virtual IP address (VIP). Should the master HALB deployment fail, a slave is promoted to master and takes its place.

RAS PowerShell

Parallels RAS PowerShell allows you to perform Parallels RAS administrative tasks using PowerShell cmdlets. You can execute cmdlets in the Windows PowerShell console or you can write scripts to perform common Parallels RAS administrative tasks. A complete guide to Parallels RAS PowerShell is available on the Parallels website together with other Parallels RAS documentation.

RAS REST API

Parallels RAS comes with various APIs to help you develop custom applications that integrate with it. The RAS REST API is one of them.

RAS Web Admin Console

RAS Web Admin Console is an HTML5 browser-based application that lets you manage Parallels RAS.

RAS Web Administration Service

A Web service that provides the user interface for RAS Web Admin Console and implements RESTful Web services for the RAS REST API (see above).