Understanding the Remote Desktop Session Host Design Process

Updated: March 23, 2011

Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1

To begin the Remote Desktop Services design process, you must first identify your RDS deployment goals. This guide contains some predefined deployment goals so that you can understand the ways in which RDS can benefit your organization. After evaluating these goals, you can select a design that meets your deployment objectives.

The following topics explain how to identify and evaluate an RD Session Host deployment design for your organization:

• Identifying Your RD Session Host Deployment Goals

• Mapping Your Deployment Goals to an RD Session Host Design

• Evaluating RD Session Host Design Examples

The user experience to an RD Session Host server is not affected by whether the connection is to a single server or a farm. You will need to determine the user experience and whether it makes sense to use RDP 7 (preinstalled on Windows® 7 and available for Windows Vista® with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3).

For more information about the user experience for RDP, see the blog post on the Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Services) Team Blog, Remote Desktop Connection 7 for Windows 7, Windows XP & Windows Vista.

Identifying Your RD Session Host Deployment Goals

For the success of your design project, it is essential to correctly identify your RD Session Host deployment goals. Depending on the size of your organization and the level of involvement you are expecting other teams, form a project team that can clearly articulate real-world deployment issues in a vision statement. Make sure that the members of this team understand the tasks your deployment project must accomplish to reach your RD Session Host deployment goals.

As you write your vision statement, take steps to identify, clarify, and refine your deployment goals. Prioritize and, if necessary, combine your deployment goals so that you can design and deploy RD Session Host using an iterative approach. You can take advantage of existing, documented, and predefined RD Session Host deployment goals that are relevant to the RD Session Host designs and develop a working solution for your scenarios.

The following table lists the main tasks for articulating, refining, and documenting your RD Session Host deployment goals.

Regardless of the deployment scenario you decide to deploy, you will need to set up a Remote Desktop Licensing (RD Licensing) server. RD Session Host servers may be configured for per-user or per-device licensing. For additional information on licensing see, Overview of Remote Desktop Services Licensing