
Useful resources
Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) is an industry leading desktop virtualization platform. It is the successor to Microsoft Terminal Services and facilitates the efficient, flexible and secure deployment of a Windows desktop environment and/or Windows applications, to users both locally and remotely.
Loadbalancer.org provides value-add by enabling scalability, high-availability and ease of management to users wishing to load balance their session hosts, connection broker with either session hosts or virtualisation hosts, session hosts with connection broker, gateways and web access servers depending on the infrastructure or operational requirements.
The load balancer is typically used to load balance multiple Connection Brokers, multiple Web Access Servers and multiple Gateway Servers. Session Hosts are normally load balanced by the Connection Brokers, although the load balancer can also be used as detailed in the deployment guide referenced below.
Remote Desktop Services (RDS) protocol table
Protocol | Ports | Role | Load balancing methods |
TCP/HTTPS | 443 | HTTPS (RD Gateway & RD Web Access) | Layer 7 |
TCP | 3389 | RDP | Layer 7 |
UDP | 3389 | RDP (UDP support was added in RDP v8.0) | Layer 4 |
UDP | 3391 | RDP for RD Gateway | Layer 4 |
guides
Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) Deployment Guide
Read deployment guideMicrosoft Terminal Services Deployment Guide
Read deployment guidemanual
Administration manual
Read manualcase study
Fluid Networks - Load balancing Microsoft Remote Desktop Services
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Microsoft drops support for mstshash cookies
Read blogOpen Source Windows service for reporting server load back to HAProxy
Read blogLoad balancing Microsoft Desktop Services in AWS
Read blogLoad balancing Windows Terminal Server - HAProxy and RDP Cookies or Microsoft Connection Broker
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Overview of Remote Desk Services (2008 R2)
Read otherOverview of Remote Desktop Services (2012)
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