On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 4:42 PM, Ken Cornetet <[email protected]> wrote:
> With VMWare HA, your web server and broker will only be down for a minute or 
> two - even if one physical host crashes.

You are correct about the physical host. But I am speaking of the
guest. I am trying to avoid the possibility of the web server going
down, and staying down, due to some Windows-related problem, or a
service not coming up properly. Things like that happen, you know. :-)
And if that happens, I have no HA, and we're down (well, no new
connections can be made).

With a second web server in a load balanced configuration, that
possibility goes away.

>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Leone [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 4:18 PM
> To: NT System Admin Issues
> Subject: Re: Advice on setting up a Win2012 RDS environment - Progress!
>
> On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Ken Cornetet <[email protected]> 
> wrote:
>> The web server and broker are out of the picture after the RDP client 
>> session is established with the session host.
>>
>> If something goes wrong with a session host, the users have lost their 
>> sessions anyway - no way to prevent that.
>
> Right. Another reason why we will have 3-4 session hosts (also the vendor 
> recommends approx 35 sessions per host, of their published app, and I will 
> have somewhere around 100 users total possible users, altho probably not that 
> many concurrently).
>
> But if the session hosts stay up and available, without the connection broker 
> and web server, no one who doesn't already have an active connected session 
> can connect. That would be the reason for multiple brokers/web servers.
> (because even if we push an RDP to the client desktops, it points to a 
> connection broker, right, which then re-directs to a session host, as you 
> pointed out? So even clicking on the RDP link would fail, if the connect 
> broker wasn't there)
>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Michael Leone [mailto:[email protected]]
>> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 3:19 PM
>> To: NT System Admin Issues
>> Subject: Re: Advice on setting up a Win2012 RDS environment - Progress!
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 2:26 PM, Ken Cornetet <[email protected]> 
>> wrote:
>>> I don't think you can have two connection brokers without complicating 
>>> things (clustering and SQL server involved).
>>>
>>> If you have ESX clustering, you have your redundancy covered. No need for 
>>> two web servers (or two brokers). ESX does HA with fewer headaches than any 
>>> other way - use it.
>>
>> Yes, ESXi provides for HA, but with only 1 web server (or connection 
>> broker), what happens if something goes wrong with that machine? If I have 
>> to restart it for whatever reason (say it locks up, errors out, whatever), 
>> all users get kicked off the published app, don't they?.
>> That's what I am trying to avoid. Would that not be best practice?
>> Avoid a single point of failure at the various points - broker, web server, 
>> session host?
>>
>>> Here's the general traffic flow (I think...):
>>>
>>> 1. Client hits web server.
>>> 2. Web server shows available apps
>>> 3. User clicks on app
>>> 4. Web server downloads .RDP file for app. The .RDP file points to the 
>>> broker as the server address.
>>> 5. User's RDP app attempts to launch app from broker.
>>> 6. The broker sends the client a RDP "redirect" to the appropriate session 
>>> host.
>>> 7. The user's RDP then opens a connection to the session host and launches 
>>> the app.
>>>
>>> It has been a while, but I think this is how it worked in 2008 R2 and RDP 
>>> versions up through 7. I've just started looking at 2012. I think RDP 
>>> version 8 changes this up a bit.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> So the web server only really is a hand off to connection broker. Once the 
>> client gets and opens the RDP file, the web server becomes unimportant to 
>> the situation. So I guess having multiple web servers would be just for 
>> redundancy - if the web server goes down, currently connected users 
>> shouldn't even notice anything. But it means new users wouldn't be able to 
>> connect, until the web server becomes available again.
>>
>> Similarly for connection brokers, if I understand correctly. I'm not sure 
>> how multiple connection brokers would coordinate between themselves, or load 
>> balance.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Michael Leone [mailto:[email protected]]
>>> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 2:04 PM
>>> To: NT System Admin Issues
>>> Subject: Re: Advice on setting up a Win2012 RDS environment - Progress!
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 1:24 PM, Ken Cornetet <[email protected]> 
>>> wrote:
>>>> For traffic handling, you don't need two web servers for 4 session hosts. 
>>>> You don't need 2 web servers for 40 session hosts.
>>>
>>> Well, it's more for redundancy, than actual traffic balancing.
>>> Speaking of which ... does that mean for my situation I would want 2 
>>> connection brokers, rather than 2 web servers?
>>>
>>> Am I correct in assuming that the user actually hits the connection broker, 
>>> which then passes to the web server (since we would want our users to be 
>>> able to access via web browser), which then communicates back and forth 
>>> with the session host? So I would want 2 connection brokers (which would be 
>>> tied to my Cisco ACE appliance), so that if one goes down, complete access 
>>> to the application itself does not.
>>> Similarly, I would want 2 web servers, and then the 3-4 session hosts
>>> (altho only the connection brokers would be connected to the ACE
>>> appliance)
>>>
>>> (also: in my case, the application being published is really just a front 
>>> end itself; it communicates with SQL servers for it's data.
>>> There is no data in the application itself)
>>>
>>>> For HA, I presume you are using an ESX cluster.
>>>
>>> Yep. ESXi 5.0 Update 2 cluster (hopefully soon be 5.1).
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Michael Leone [mailto:[email protected]]
>>>> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 1:07 PM
>>>> To: NT System Admin Issues
>>>> Subject: Re: Advice on setting up a Win2012 RDS environment - Progress!
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 7:53 PM, James Hill <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>> Get a cert from a public CA.  Far less hassle and they are very 
>>>>> inexpensive.
>>>>
>>>> These are internals apps, so they won't be accessed by the public, or over 
>>>> a public Internet (well, perhaps over VPN). And being a government agency, 
>>>> we can get certs for free from another agency.
>>>>
>>>>> Why do you want to separate the web front end?
>>>>
>>>> Load balancing by our hardware Cisco ACE appliance. Also it then enables 
>>>> use to send the session to any available session host.
>>>> Separating out the web front end from the back end RDSH servers (aka the 
>>>> server farm) is also the current configuration we have with our Citrix 
>>>> environment, and is I believe the recommended design for something like 
>>>> this. (I am told).
>>>>
>>>> What we want, or will have, is 2 web front ends and 3-4 back end session 
>>>> hosts.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> James.
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Michael Leone [mailto:[email protected]]
>>>>> Sent: Thursday, 21 March 2013 4:40 AM
>>>>> To: NT System Admin Issues
>>>>> Subject: Re: Advice on setting up a Win2012 RDS environment - Progress!
>>>>>
>>>>> SO I am making progress! I had already installed the RDS as a role,
>>>>> but that didn't configure the deployment. So I went to Server
>>>>> Manager, clicked on RDS, and clicked on Deploy. It then went into
>>>>> what seemed like an install of RDS as a service (which had failed
>>>>> before). This time, however, the deploy step went through without
>>>>> error. I rebooted at the end, and after I logged back in, I was
>>>>> able to install an app (Notepad++), and then I was able to add it
>>>>> to a Quick Session Collection, publish it as a RemoteApp, and I was able 
>>>>> to access it remotely.
>>>>>
>>>>> w00t!
>>>>>
>>>>> Definite progress. So now I need to make my own collection, add an
>>>>> app to it. Then investigate how to use a separate web server front
>>>>> end for it (to separate the RDS hosts from the web access).
>>>>>
>>>>> And probably give it our self-signed internal certificate, to stop
>>>>> it complaining about untrusted publishers of the app.
>>>>>
>>>>> So I am definitely further along than I was.
>>>>>
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