Step by step installation guide installing a RD Session Host with RemoteFX (Part 1)

The last couple weeks there’s a lot of talk about Microsoft Teched Europe 2010 and a lot of it is about RemoteFX. There are some great posts on the net about what RemoteFX is, and what the future will be for it. Here are some links that caught my attention:

• The Microsoft Teched Europe 2010 videos
• Brian Madden’s post back in March. And his video showing it.
• Hardware Considerations for RemoteFX from MS Technet
• The Microsoft virtualization team blog
• Doingitvirtual.com on AMD’s Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI)
• Janique Carbone on Second Level Address Translation benefits in Hyper-V

Reading all this info made me interested on how to install it on my home lab, and if it was even possible. To keep the post readablei devided the post into three parts:

• Part 1: Step by step installing Hyper-V (Host) and
• Part 2: preparing the VM for Remote Desktop Session Host (Guest)
• Part 3: Step by step enabling RemoteFX.

This is part 1 so lets start with installing Hyper-V. I’ll presume you’ll have system running Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1 RC installed. I’ll also will not show how to install the VM for the RDSH, that’s a simple next, next finish install, which you already done installing the Hyper-V host.

To enlarge the screenshots just click on them!

For the installation of Hyper-V click on start and go to Administrative Tools and click on System Manager, which will open the following window:

On the Left side highlight Roles (see first screenshot below), and then click add roles (the second):

When you’ve done this the Before You Begin window will show, in which you’ll click next:

When you clicked Next the Select Server Roles window will show, in which you select Hyper-V, and click Next:

The Hyper-V window will show, in which you’ll click Next:

The Create Virtual Networks window will show, in which you’ll choose the appropriate network card(s) and click next:

The Confirm Installation Selections window will show, in which you’ll click Install:

After installing the Hyper-V role the Installation Results window shows, in which you’ll choose Close:

After clicking close this window will show, click Yes to restart the server:

When the server rebooted, and you’re logged in, the installation will finish with the following window:

The installation of Hyper-V is now done! Let’s install the Remote Desktop Session Host. Click on Start go to Administrative tools and open System Manager again:

Go to roles on the left side and click on it. Go to Hyper-V, Hyper-V Manager and right click on the server. Select New Virtual machine

The Before you Begin window will show in which we’ll press Next:

The Specify Name and Location window will show, in which we can give the VM a name (WINSRRDSH01 in my case) and where we can set the location in which the VM will be stored. When we set Name and location we’ll click Next:

The Assign Memory window will show. I’ve given the VM 1024 MB’s of memory, but we’ll adjust that later with Dynamic Memory (also new to SP1), and click next:

The Configure Networking window will show. Select the network card you want to use and click Next:

The Connect Virtual Hard Disk window will show. I only did a reset of of the filesize, because 40 GB is more then enough. click Next:

The Installation Options window will show. I have an iso file for the server installation which I select, and click Next:

The Completing the New Virtual Machine Wizard window shows, if it meets your needs click Finish. The VM will be created.

Perform a normal Windows Server 2008 R2 installation, and install SP1 RC on it.

If you’re done installing, let’s proceed to part 2. Implementing a Remote Desktop Session Host.

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