One of the most welcomed features in Windows Server 2016 when on the topic
of Remote Desktop Services is the ability to store the RD Connection Broker
state database in an Azure PaaS database instance. In previous versions of RDS,
the only method to achieve high availability for the RD Connection Broker was
to implement a shared SQL database using AlwaysOn Availability Groups or a
similar HA technique inside SQL Server.
Connect to your Azure ARM account
Add-AzureRmAccount
|
Define the variable and create a new Resource Group
$resourceGroup = "rds2016"
$resourceGroupLocation = "West Europe"
New-AzureRmResourceGroup -Name $resourceGroup -Location
$resourceGroupLocation
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Define the variables for the SQL Server
$serverName = "rds2016demo"
$serverVersion = "12.0"
$serverLocation = $resourceGroupLocation
$serverResourceGroupName = $resourceGroup
$serverAdmin = "IT"
$serverAdminPassword = "pshere"
$securePassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -String
$serverAdminPassword -AsPlainText -Force
$serverCreds = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential
-ArgumentList $serverAdmin, $securePassword
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Create the new logical SQL Server using defined variables
New-AzureRmSqlServer -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -ServerName
$serverName -Location
$serverLocation -ServerVersion
$serverVersion -SqlAdministratorCredentials
$serverCreds
|
Define the variables for the SQL database
$DatabaseName = "rdsdeployment"
$DatabaseEdition = "Basic"
$DatabaseServiceLevel = "Basic"
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Create the new database using defined variables
$AzureDatabase = New-AzureRmSqlDatabase -DatabaseName
$DatabaseName -ServerName
$serverName -ResourceGroupName
$resourceGroup -Edition
$DatabaseEdition -RequestedServiceObjectiveName $DatabaseServiceLevel
$AzureDatabase
|
I used the portal to check that the resources had been
created properly before I started configuring the Remote Desktop Connection
Brokers.
Now the Azure PaaS database has been created we can now
configure our RD Connection Brokers to use it as the state database. Although
you must first create some firewall rules on the Azure side to allow
communication to your cloud SQL instance. Click the Firewall tab enable Allow
access to Azure services and click the Add
client IP.
Commit the changes by clicking Save.
I have configured my deployment with two multi-role RDS
servers, all the roles with the exception of the RD Connection Broker have
already been made highly available.
From the Deployment
Overview page, right click on the RD
Connection Broker and select Configure
High Availability.
Select Shared Database Server and click Next.
From your Azure PaaS database click on the Show database connection strings
option.
Click the ODBC (Including Node.js) tab and copy the entire
connection string.
You then have to download and
install the ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server, you can grab a copy from here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53339
Once this has been done
return to the RD configuration screen and enter the FQDN of the RDS cluster I
have configured DNS Round Robin ahead of time for this deployment. Please note
you could also use a hardware application delivery controller, this would be
the recommended approach as DNS RR does not offer any kind of “failover”. I
explain some of the differences in this blog post
You must copy the entire
connection string, but please remember to change the password field.
