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LeventeM
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RDS Host question

Dear community!

I have a theoretical question. My colleague and I have set up our Horizon environment, we mostly use it for application virtualization for end users can access their apps from the Horizon client or from a browser.

Currently we have the AD server, our connection server and one RDS server (that contains our installed apps)

Right now, we had a thought that if our RDS server needs an update or it shuts down for some reason our users can't access their applications.

So, our question is this: is there a way to create a backup RDS server for the main version that can communicate with each other somehow.

Like user logs in - they see their app - stats it but in the background RDS server 1 is down so it automatically switches to the server 2.

Or this kind of backup can only be achieved that we have two different RDS server with both of them having the installed app and on the connection servera user setting they will have twice entitlements for this one app?

So if they log in they will see two pieces of the app so if they click on one of it and it won't work (because server maintenance) they can choose the other one.

Thank you in advance for an answer and I hope it can be achieved somehow.

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MattEvans
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I think given the number of questions you have I would suggest working with your local VMware EUC team to help you. However, I can also provide some detail on some of your questions and details. The ideal setup would be that you use an ESX host and take advantage of our Instant Clone technology to spin up new additional virtual machines which could be added to the RDS Farm.

However, based on what you have told me you could also build an RDS Farm manually, however you would need to make sure that RDS-SERVER1 and RDS-SERVER2 have the same applications and where configured in the same way, if this did not happen the user experience would not be great. If you created an RDS Farm you would be able to publish an app and that could then launch from either host.

To create an RDS Farm manually please refer to this details; Create a Manual Farm.​ You would then need to create an application pool, this can also be done manually following these steps Creating Application Pools

If you are new to Horizon I would suggest reviewing the Horizon | VMware​ section of TechZone as there is lots of information here and you can also sign up for the VMware Hero path which is a training path.

Hope this helps.

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MattEvans
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Unless I am misunderstanding the use case, could you create an RDS Farm and add the two RDS hosts into that? You could then publish an app and it would be served from either server, this would give you HA.

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LeventeM
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Sorry if I'm misunderstand your answer. What we like to achieve is that for instance: we want users to access the calculator from a browser (just for the example). The calc app is installed on an rds server and users can access it without issues from their browser.

But what happens if the rds server is down? How can we provide the users their app even is the server is down?

Is there a way to create a backup server for the main rds?

Or to achieve this we need two rds servers with both of them having one calc app installed but for the user experience there will be two calc icon on their field (both of them are the same app, but from different servers) So if they click on one of it and it can't be launched (because in the background that rds server is down) they can go and choose the other one instead.

I'm deeply sorry for any nuisance but English is not my native language and I'm trying my best to tell you the vision or issue we are having. And trying to find the best solution.

So in total: how can we provide backup for our rds host server so our users won't experience issues with their application and can be run at anytime even if there is a server maintenance.

Because some apps need to be accessed 24/7.

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Kishoreg5674
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You can create a automated farm using either linked\Instant clone to build 2 or more identical RDSH servers hosting the same applications & publish applications from this farm. 

In case of maintenance activity, you can put the RDSH server in maintenance mode so that endusers are not affected.

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MattEvans
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The message below echoes what I was going to say. You would build an RDS Farm called 'RDS Servers', for example, you could then build an RDS Server as a template, let's say called RDS-TEMPLATE. On RDS-TEMPLATE you would install the applications required, for example Calculator, and then deploy two VMs from the template, they could be called RDS-1 and RDS-2. You would publish the Calculator app from the Farm and not a specific server, when a user opened the Horizon Client they would click on 'Calculator' and the Connection Server would establish a connection to RDS-1 or RDS-2, this would be invisible to the user and provide you with HA. You could remove or add more RDS hosts to the Farm and it would continue to work.

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LeventeM
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Just one more thing to add in this topic. We started using vmware a few weeks ago. Right now we just trying our "wings" because none of us used these products before so we don't have any experience at all.

I want to add how we deployed our environment (maybe we set our things up on the wrong way).

The first we have is the Active directory server (we didn't work with that at all. We just use it for reaching the company workers for entitlements) the second server where we installed our Horizon 7 connection server (the Horizon 7 standard server installation) we added a valid certificate for that server and because we can access the horizon admin page from other devices we don't really bother on using that machine "physically".

And the third server we use is where we installed our applications we want to publish, after that we added the rds role for it and after that we installed the horizon agent.

After these setups we went for the horizon admin webpage > Resources > Farms > Add... we choose the Manual farm setting because we didn't set up a vCenter server (as I understand it's needed and useful if we want to create desktop pools but what we want to achieve is just application publishing so users wont need to install, update etc. any software on their devices).

We went through the setup process on adding a Farm and on the select RDS host setting we choose the only server we saw (where we installed the rds role and the other stuff) so we could finish that setup.

After all these settings  we went to Catalog > Application Pools > Add on the Select rds farm it loaded the rds server's installed apps so we could set up the app pools without and issue and after that we given the entitlements for everyone (because we could reach our users on the ad server).

And this is our current setup, maybe we messed up - if so then please write down how we really needed to create our environment.

In total what we want to achieve (with the easiest way as possible) is that our users can always reach their apps, in the future we want to publish new apps at once for every user (not to be set up one by one) and that they don't need to set up complicated environments for them to work.

And because of that we want to know how to prepare for the scenario (like I said before) if the rds server is down how can we provide the users the same published apps in the meantime until we can revive the server.

Maybe as both of you said before - that is the solution for it. If so how can we crate it? What else do we need for our environment?

I hope I wrote everything essential and still sorry for the nuisance and thank you in advance for the help.

Ps.: I think we also needed a security server - as we progressed in the setup we realized we won't need it because it won't be out on the internet, just in our internal network.

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MattEvans
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I think given the number of questions you have I would suggest working with your local VMware EUC team to help you. However, I can also provide some detail on some of your questions and details. The ideal setup would be that you use an ESX host and take advantage of our Instant Clone technology to spin up new additional virtual machines which could be added to the RDS Farm.

However, based on what you have told me you could also build an RDS Farm manually, however you would need to make sure that RDS-SERVER1 and RDS-SERVER2 have the same applications and where configured in the same way, if this did not happen the user experience would not be great. If you created an RDS Farm you would be able to publish an app and that could then launch from either host.

To create an RDS Farm manually please refer to this details; Create a Manual Farm.​ You would then need to create an application pool, this can also be done manually following these steps Creating Application Pools

If you are new to Horizon I would suggest reviewing the Horizon | VMware​ section of TechZone as there is lots of information here and you can also sign up for the VMware Hero path which is a training path.

Hope this helps.

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