Fast and fluid audio/video experience with the new Lync and RemoteFX

Great announcement on the RDS blog by Shanmugam Kulandaivel, a senior program manager on the Remote Desktop Virtualization (RDV) team : Fast and fluid audio/video experience with the new Lync and RemoteFX This is great news as this covers vm-based scenarios as well as session (traditional terminal servers) !

"... One of the announcements that will particularly interest readers of this blog is the support for Lync audio and video in virtual machine-based and session-based desktop deployments. You can find more details in the section titled ‘Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Plug-in’ in this TechNet article. The RDV and Lync teams worked over the past year to help enable a seamless, fast, and fluid conferencing experience that works with the new Lync in Windows Server 2012 deployments by using RemoteFX..."

"...A key part of the new architecture is the RemoteFX Media Redirection API, which allows Voice over IP (VoIP) applications to natively integrate with RemoteFX, and enables transmission and rendering of audio and video content directly on the client side.

Some of the significant advantages of this approach include:

Audio and video performance similar to that of running Lync locally. Since a double hop of media content is avoided, even WAN users can have a great Lync conferencing experience.

Reduced bandwidth usage between the client and the data center because Lync media content is not sent from the server-based desktop anymore.

Improved server scalability because CPU intensive media processing happens on the client side..."

Source : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2012/07/24/fast-and-fluid-audio-video-experience-with-the-new-lync-and-remotefx.aspx

RDV team blog post: virtual machine-based desktop deployment using PowerShell

 

Yesterday my article post “Using PowerShell to control RDS in Windows Server 2012” was published. That article had a focus on Session Based Deployment using PowerShell. Today Omair Gillani, a program manager on the Microsoft Remote Desktop Virtualization team published a great new post on using PowerShell for RDS as well. This post has a focus on virtual machine-based desktop deployment.

Read it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2012/07/18/setting-up-a-new-remote-desktop-services-deployment-using-windows-powershell.aspx

New article: Using PowerShell to control RDS in Windows Server 2012

My new article entitled "Using PowerShell to control RDS in Windows Server 2012" on virtualizationadmin.com just got published. In this article I do dive into some of the new PowerShell commands for the Remote Desktop Services scenarios that are available with Windows Server 2012. The article discusses the installation of a RDS deployment, the creation of a Session Collection and the creation of RemoteApps. All using Powershell. I’m already working on a part II of this article in which we’ll dive even deeper. Stay tuned!

“…Introduction. PowerShell has been around for many years now. There is no way to work around PowerShell anymore, and you should not even want to work around it. With every new release of every new Microsoft product or service, we see an even tighter integration with PowerShell. With the upcoming release, it’s even bigger than before. With Windows Server 2012, we have over 2400 cmdlets available! That is a huge number! In this article, we will take a look at how PowerShell is integrated with Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2012. We will dive into PowerShell commands for both RDS scenarios that are available with Windows Server 2012. That is, the Virtual machine-based desktop deployment as well as the Session-based desktop deployment…”

Source: http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vdi-articles/general/using-powershell-control-rds-windows-server-2012.html

Everything you ever wanted to know about Microsoft VDI - from TechEd 2012

Gaurav Daga, the Lead Program Manager on Microsoft's Remote Desktop Virtualization team did a great summary blog post containing links to all the Channel9 video’s on VDI recorded at TechEd 2012!

“…In June, Dean Paron posted two TechEd overview videos for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) in Windows Server 2012. Today’s blog post summarizes the key presentations from TechEd. We suggest you watch these presentations in the order shown so that you will go from a high-level overview of RDS to a deep technical analysis (with demos) of everything you want to know about the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) investments in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. You will also take away some general knowledge about VDI and other related desktop virtualization technologies..”

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2012/07/12/all-you-want-to-learn-about-microsoft-vdi-from-teched-2012.aspx 

Home folder is not mapped to a client computer when multiple users are logged on to a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2

A new hotfix was released today regarding an issue when configuring folder redirection of the the home drive for multiple users on a DFS share in conjunction with Slow Configure slow-link mode being enabled. Apparently, the second user that logs on does not get the mapped drive

“…Consider the following scenario:

• You have a client computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 in an Active Directory domain.
• You set up home folders for domain user accounts on a Distributed File System (DFS) share.
• You redirect the home folders to the DFS root by configuring the Folder Redirection Group Policy setting on the server.
  
  Note You can use the %HOMEDRIVE% variable to map to the DFS root.
• You use the slow-link mode for redirected folders. To do this, you enable the following Group Policy setting:
  Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Network\Offline Files\Configure slow-link mode
• A domain user logs on to the client computer, and then the home folder is mapped to the client computer.
• The mapped home folder is configured to use slow-link mode.
• A second domain user who shares the same DFS root with the previous domain user logs on to the same client computer.

In this scenario, folder redirection fails. More specifically, the home folder of the second user is not mapped to the client computer…”

Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2715922/en-us?sd=rss&spid=14134

Windows Server 2012 will be released to manufacturing in the first week of August

We’re close to the availability of Windows Server 2012. The following was announced today:

”…we are announcing that Windows Server 2012 will be released to manufacturing in the first week of August. The code will be complete and we will begin delivering it to our hardware partners. Then, the product will be generally available to customers worldwide through multiple channels in September.

You, our customers and partners, have downloaded pre-release versions of Windows Server 2012 more than 500,000 times - more than any other server from Microsoft before. We can’t wait to get the final version out the door to you!…”

This means we have exciting times ahead of us!
Source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/07/09/windows-server-2012-final-release-timing.aspx

Windows Server 2012: Licensing, FAQ and Capabilities

Windows Server 2012 will be available in four editions; Datacenter, Standard, Essentials and Foundation. Check out the details on licensing and capabilities below.

1. Find licensing and pricing details in this downloadable datasheet
2. Find the answers to the most commonly asked pricing and licensing questions.
3. Check out the capabilities in Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate.

Edition	Ideal for…	High Level Feature Comparison	Licensing Model	Pricing Open NL (US$)
Datacenter	Highly virtualized private & hybrid cloud environments	Full Windows Server functionality with unlimited virtual instances	Processor + CAL*	$4,809**
Standard	Low density or non- virtualized environments	Full Windows Server functionality with two virtual instances	Processor + CAL*	$882**
Essentials	Small business environments	Simpler interface, pre-configured connectivity to cloud based services; no virtualization rights	Server (25 User Account Limit)	$425**
Foundation	Economical general purpose server	General purpose server functionality with no virtualization rights	Server (15 User Account Limit)	OEM Only

*CALs are required for every user or device accessing a server directly or indirectly. See the Product Use Rights for details.

**Pricing represents Open No Level (NL) ERP. For your specific pricing, contact your Microsoft reseller.

Remote Desktop Related (taken from the FAQ):

“…Q28. Do I still need a separate CAL to access Remote Desktop Services Do I still need a separate CAL to access Remote Desktop Services  (RDS) and Active Directory Rights Management Service (ADRMS)?

Yes, The licensing requirements for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and Active Directory Rights Management Service (ADRMS) have not changed with Windows Server 2012. Customers are still required to purchase an ADRMS or RDS CAL in addition to a Windows Server CAL to access ADRMS or RDS functionality. The CAL accessing the instance of Windows Server must be equivalent or higher in version than the server being accessed..”

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server/2012-editions.aspx

Introduction to Windows PowerShell scripting in Windows Server 2012 Remote Desktop Services (by RDS team)

The Microsoft RDS team released a new blog post on using Powershell for Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2012. It’s discusses the RemoteDesktop module, and contains many examples on the different cmdlets!

“…One of the new features that we’re all very proud of in Windows Server 2012 is a new Windows PowerShell layer, which provides a powerful set of functionality to set up, configure, and control your Windows Server 2012 Remote Desktop Services (RDS) deployments. The feature is too big to cover in one post, but I wanted to give you a quick introduction to help you get started with scripting your deployments in the Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate build. In this post I’ll give a brief overview of the kinds of tasks you can perform by using the new RDS Windows PowerShell layer, and then go a bit more in-depth with one of the Windows PowerShell cmdlets that you’ll likely be using a lot in your scripts (Get-RDServer), and finally finish up with a practical example showing how to use that cmdlet to install the Desktop Experience feature on all of the Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host) servers in your deployment…”

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2012/06/28/introduction-to-windows-powershell-scripting-in-windows-server-2012-remote-desktop-services.aspx