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Adding an RD Session Host Server

RD Session Host server requirements

An RD Session Host server must have the Remote Desktop Services (RDS) role installed. RDS was known as Terminal Services prior to Windows 2008 R2. On some older versions of Windows Server, Terminal Services are not installed by default. If you are using such a server, you can install RDS on it right from the RAS Console, as described later in this section.

Quickly add an RD Session Host

You can quickly add an RD Session Host server to a site from the Start category in the RAS Console. This process is described in the Setting Up a Basic Parallels RAS Farm section .

The rest of this section describes how to add an RD Session Host server from the Farm category. Compared to using the Start category, this process consists of more steps but gives you more options.

Discover RD Session Hosts on your network

Before adding RD Session Hosts, you can search for servers in your Active Directory domain that meet the necessary Parallels RAS requirements (see System Requirements ).

To search for servers:

  1. In the RAS Console, navigate to Farm \ Site \ RD Session Hosts .
  2. On the RD Session Hosts tab page, click Tasks > Discover RD session hosts .
  3. The Find Servers dialog opens and begins searching for suitable servers. If no servers are found, you'll see a message box where you can click OK to close the box and the dialog. In such a case, you can add a server manually (jump to the Adding an RD Session Host Manually subsection below).
  4. If at least one suitable server is found, it will be displayed in the Find Servers dialog.
  5. Select a server and verify whether the RAS RD Session Host Agent is installed on it by looking at the Agent column. If the agent is not installed, click the Install Agent button and follow the instructions.
  6. Click OK .
  7. On the RD Session Hosts tab page in the RAS Console, verify that the RD Session Host is enabled (the checkbox in front of the server name is selected). If it's not, select the checkbox.

Adding an RD Session Host Manually

To add an RD Session Host manually:

  1. Click Add in the Tasks drop-down menu.
  2. In the Add RD Session Host dialog, specify the following options:
    • Server . Specify the server IP address or FQDN.
    • Add Firewall Rules . Automatically configure the firewall on the server to meet Parallels RAS requirements.
    • Install RDS role . Install the RDS role in Windows running on the server.
    • Enable Desktop Experience . Enable the Desktop Experience feature in Windows running on the server. This option is enabled only if the Install RDS role option (above) is selected. The option applies to Windows Server 2008 R1/R2 and Windows 2012 R1/R2 on which the Desktop Experience feature is not enabled by default.
    • Restart server if required . Restart the server if necessary. Please note that this option is ignored if a restart is pending on a local machine (i.e. the restart of a local machine will not be forced).
    • Specify users or groups to be added to the Remote Desktop Users group . This option allows you to add Parallels RAS users or groups to the Remote Desktop Users group in Windows running on the server. This is necessary for your Parallels RAS users to be able to access published resources hosted by an RD Session Host. If a Parallels RAS user is not a member of the Remote Desktop Users group on a given RD Session Host, they will be denied access to its published resources. Select this option and then use the [+] icon below it to specify users or groups.
  3. Click Next .
  4. In the next step, a checking is performed if the RAS RD Session Host Agent is installed on the server.

    If the agent is not installed:

    1. Click Install to push install the agent.
    2. In the Installing RD Session Host Agent dialog, select the server name on which the agent is to be installed.
    3. (Optional) Select the Override system credentials option to specify and use different credentials to connect to the server.
    4. Click Install to install the agent. Click Done once the agent is installed. If the push installation of the RAS RD Session Host Agent fails (e.g. SMB share is not available, cannot push agent due to firewall rules, etc.), please refer to the Installing RAS RD Session Host Agent Manually section , which follows this one.
  5. In the Agent Information dialog, click Add to add the RD Session Host to the Parallels RAS farm.
  6. Click Apply in the Parallels RAS Console to commit the new settings.
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