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HowTo: Use Remote Desktop Gateway with Windows Server 2012 Connection Brokers

Summary

With Windows Service 2012/R2 Microsoft changed the way how clients connect to remote desktop session hosts. Previously the client only needed to know the address of the remote desktop farm. Then it automatically negotiated the correct session host for its connection.

Now farms don't exist anymore. Session hosts are grouped into collections, which are managed by the connection broker (a new server role). The client needs to connect to the connection broker and specify the collection of session hosts it wants to connect to, known as TSVUrl, session hint or load balance info. The connection broker than manages consistent sessions and load balancing.

The MyWorkspace Remote Desktop Gateway has support for specifying the TSVUrl, so you don't have to rely on any workarounds. When you use our Active Directory Connector to automatically pull in Remote Apps from your Remote Desktop Services, we will take care about this automatically. When you manually create Remote Desktop connections in MyWorkspace however, you need to enter this info.

Goal

After completing this how-to you will know how to find the TSVUrl for your Remote Apps and how to configure your apps in MyWorkspace to use it.

First Step - Find TSVUrl

  1. Login to your server, which acts as the connection broker.
  2. Go to the following registry key:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\CentralPublishedResources\PublishedFarms\<CollectionName>\Applications\<RemoteApp>\
  3. Copy the value of RDPFileContents into a text editor.
  4. You find the TSVUrl in the loadbalanceinfo line, starting with "tsv://".
    find-tsvurl.png

Second Step - Configure Remote Apps in MyWorkspace

  1. Create a "Remote App" or "Remote Desktop Connection" application.
  2. Set "Host" to the addess of the connection broker.
  3. Set "Session Hint/TSVUrl" to the value copied in the first step.
  4. Configure the rest of values correctly for your environment.
    configure-app-in-myworkspace.png