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We currently have a Windows 2012 Server in our office running Remote Desktop Services. All of our users remote into the server when they need to run a windows application. We are thinking of simply firing up a windows server VM instance in Google Cloud (transferring all of our licenses), and use that instead (and get rid of our onsite server).

Is this possible and if so, is there any reason we should not do it? It would appear to be 1/2 the price of Desktop as a Service and our users are already used to remoting in to an RDS instance.

neilH
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MindWire
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  • If you go this route, for security reasons I would recommend that you either have this RDS server only accessible from your offices' external IP, via a site-to-site VPN w/ your office, or configure RD Gateway on your RDS server and have it only accessible via RD Gateway (using port 443, not 3389). RD Gateway provides additional capabilities for locking down which users can connect, which helps block botnets constantly attacking your local 'administrator' accounts, or similar. – Jason Rush Dec 05 '17 at 22:04
  • Make sure your licenses allow License Mobility! https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/windows/ms-licensing – eKKiM Nov 19 '19 at 11:01

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Yes, this is possible and very easy to implement on Google Cloud Platform.

There are many public images available within the platform, including Windows 2012 images, and these can be used to boot a new Windows 2012 instance.

When you create a new project a network "default-allow-rdp" rule is automatically set up which will allow RDP access into your virtual network from external sources for authenticated users.

Similarly, when you create a new Windows instance from one of the publicly available images, RDP is automatically configured. If you have Chrome RDP installed in your browser it's possible to access your new machine from an "RDP" button available in the Google Cloud Platform Console view.

There is a "Set Windows password" option in the Console which allows you to set the user and password before you access the machine for the first time.

You would also have the option of using any other RDP clients to access the VM. This is made simple by downloading an RDP file from the Console and using utilizing it with your chosen RDP client.

There is a good explanation here on how to set up RDP in Google Cloud.

neilH
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