So newer to managing RDS2012 along with using the MS RDS Web Interface.
- Can users just RDP directly to the session hosts like previous TS?
- If not, what happens when the broker is down?
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You technically can RDP directly to the session hosts in a farm, by using the /admin switch, but this is considered emergency access mode, I.e., when your session broker is down. By using the /admin switch you're bypassing RDS CALs which means you're back to the two simultaneous administrative connections restriction.
High availability for the Remote Desktop Session Broker has changed (improved) a bit in Server 2012. Before, you needed MS Cluster Services, which means you needed an Enterprise edition license to do an active/passive cluster with MSCS. That is no longer the case. Now we do Active/Active brokering:
The primary benefit of Active/Active Broker is high availability. The deployment will keep working as long as there is one running RD Connection Broker server in the deployment. Individual RD Connection Broker servers can be taken down for maintenance at any time without disrupting the deployment. The addition and removal of RD Connection Broker servers is also very easy.
So yes if you let your RD Session Broker become a single point a failure it can cause your entire Remote Desktop deployment to become unusable. So don't let that happen and bake some high-availability into it.
A good blog post for follow up reading:
Ryan Ries
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