Microsoft releases Windows Server 2016 in last year with many new exciting features. Improved Remote Desktop Services is one of their major selling points. So what’s comes with Remote Desktop 2016, what can we gain from upgrading, from this post lets discuss the major improvements and design changes of Remote Desktop Services 2016.

Design Changes

Remote Desktop Services in Azure

You can deploy Remote desktop services in Azure IAAS services. This is fully supported and there are some good advantages while doing so. Also Microsoft promote to host your RDS in azure after demoting Remote App Azure service. Following advantages can be archived hosting RDS in Azure.

• Use Azure SQL for Connection broker database
  You can use Azure SQL service for hosting connection broker database, this will also address the High availability requirement of the SQL database for broker servers. It’s actually save great deal of hardware and licensing cost.  

• Use of elastic features of Azure
  You can bring up Additional Session host servers when you actually require them. Also deallocate them when less users are active. This will save great deal of money, in example when company holidays your servers are switched offed and VM’s are not getting billed. There is a new automation tool for this, RDSH Auto-Scaling script. This is a PowerShell script running in the Connection broker which is scaling the RDSH servers up and down based on usage by hours.

• Use of varies VM’s on Azure
  In azure there are number of different types of VM’s to select. According to the RDS workload you can select the VM type, high performance and memory you can use G-series, or N-series if you prefer high VGA performance. Also you can deploy the Session host server instantly.

Connection Broker High Availability changes

Two or more connection broker servers are required to address the high availability of a RDS solution. Also it require a dedicated SQL database, and to make it high available, we should create a SQL mirror or SQL availability groups. But with RDS 2016 we don’t need a dedicated SQL database. You can use an existing SQL cluster to host the connection broker database. Also as mentioned previously you can use the Azure SQL DB.

User Profile Disk

User profile disk came up with Remote desktop services 2012, it store user and application data on a single virtual disk that is dedicated to one user’s profile, completely transparent to the user, users can save documents to their Documents folder (on what appears to be a local drive) and change their background wallpaper and app settings while, at the same time, all personal settings persist when connecting to different computers in a virtual desktop collection or session collections.

With RDS 2016 in azure you can use Storage Space Direct for the file server of UPD. You don’t need shared storage cluster which is still not possible in Azure. Storage space Direct enable scale out file server (SOFS) using Azure VM’s. You can use two small VM’s with Storage Space Direct and enable high availability to your User Profile Disks.

New and Improved Features of RDS 2016

Personal Session Desktops

This is a new feature in RDS 2016 which you can assign specific users to a specific RDSH server, so when user login using Remote desktop session they will log only to that defined Session host server. You can use the same RDS collection to do this. And it will allow users to have additional access rights to the session host servers. Which they can install their own apps, restart session host server etc.

Improved connection handling performance

Connection broker improved with 2016 and now it can handle over 10,000 concurrent logon requests. When large number of users trying to log-on or log-off, which also called as “Login Storm”, improved connection broker can handle the load without giving delays to users. This open the doors to service providers to provide RDS as a Desktop as a Service to their customers. 

Graphics enhancements

RemoteFX vGPU

RemoteFX vGPU provides a rich desktop remoting experiencing with Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Services enabling multiple VM’s to share the same physical GPU for graphics acceleration. Windows Server 2016 Remote Desktop Services includes the following improvements to RemoteFX vGPU 

• OpenGL 4.4 and OpenCL 1.1 API support.
• Up to 1GB dedicated VRAM and up to 1GB of shared memory available in VM.
• Up to 4k resolution support.
• Windows Server 2016 VM support.
• Improved performance.

Discrete Device Assignment

Discrete Device Assignment (DDA) is a Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V feature that allows some PCI Express devices to be passed through directly to a guest VM (to be controlled by the guest VM). Devices used in this way cannot be used by the host or other VMs.

Windows Server 2016 Remote Desktop Session Hosts can now take advantage of DDA, enabling enhanced graphics performance.

• Full graphics API Support (ex. DirectX, OpenGL, CUDA, OpenCL) (depends on GPU driver).
• Native GPU Driver Support (Intel, AMD, NVIDIA).
• Maximum Performance (1 or more GPUs to 1 VM).
• Multiuser RDSH Support. Multiple sessions can utilize the graphics card assigned to the RDSH VM via DDA.

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Graphics Compression

Windows Server 2016 (and Windows 10) RDP graphics compression (codec) now implements full-screen AVC 444 mode. This enhancement provides:

• Reduced bandwidth and better experience at higher resolutions
• Hardware offload support.

Support for Gen 2 VMs

With Hyper-V improvements of Server 2016, now we can take advantage of some of security features of Gen 2 VMs as template images for personal or pooled VM collections and personal session desktop collections.

End user experience changes

• Pen devices like Surface Pro 3 devices are now supported for use through Remote Desktop connections.
• Zoom functionality in RDS Client
• Remote desktop client now support almost all platforms such as Windows, Windows phone, iOS, Android and Mac OS.

Windows Multipoint Services

MultiPoint Services is a new server role in Windows Server 2016. It is a server solution that is easy to deploy and easy to manage. It enables low-cost per seat desktop computing. MultiPoint allows multiple users, each with their own independent Windows experience, to simultaneously share one computer. The unique tool-set of this role allows monitoring of all user sessions on the MultiPoint server.

MultiPoint does not use or require the Remote Desktop (RD) Connection Broker and RD Gateway roles. Enabling the Multipoint Services role, also installs Remote Desktop Session Host role which allows users to connect remotely with devices of their choice by using Remote Desktop applications available on Windows, Windows phone, Android, iOS and Mac OS.

Cheers

Asitha De Silva

References

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/ausoemteam/2016/09/05/whats-new-in-windows-server-2016-standard-edition-part-10-remote-desktop-services/

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