Step by step installation guide installing a RD Session Host with RemoteFX (Part 3)

by Arjan | Nov 27, 2010 | RemoteFX

So in part 1 and part 2 we installed a Hyper-V host and a Remote Desktop Session Host both with Server 2008 R2 SP1. This means we are ready to rumble.

Sorry to be the partypooper but that’s not exactly true, yet. Let’s see what i mean:

When examening my Hyper-V host and selecting the settings for my WINSRRDSH01 server. I see there is a RemoteFX Video Adapter option but it’s greyed out. So what should we do to be able to add (and use) RemoteFX?

There are a couple of needs for this, but let’s start with the obvious, the Hyper-V host. On the host we must do four things to enable RemoteFX:

1. Make sure SP1 RC for Windows Server 2008 R2 is installed. (If you didn’t already, download it here. And install it)
2. Add the Remote Desktop Services / RemoteFX role
3. Use GPedit.msc to set RemoteFX compression
4. Set Windows Firewall

So let’s check or set them step by step:

Make sure SP1 RC for Windows Server 2008 R2 is installed

• Go to Start and right click on Computer in the menu click on Properties. In the screen you’ll see if SP1 is installed:

If you didn’t install SP1 by now, do so by following this link.

Add the Remote Desktop Services / RemoteFX role

Go to start go to administrative tools and click Server Manager. The Server Manager window will open:

Go to Roles and on the right side click on Add Roles:

The Before you begin screen will show, click Next. The Select Server Roles window will show. Select Remote Desktop Services and click Next:

The Remote Desktop Services role will show. Click Next:

The Select Role Services window will Show. Click RemoteFX, there will be a Add Roles Wizard popup (click Add Required Role Services) and click Next:

The Confirm Installation Selections window will show. Click Install:

And after install the Installation Results window will show. Click close, and on the reboot window clik yes:

After reboot log back in and let the installation continue. The Installation Results window shows. Click close:

We’re almost there, just a couple more changes and we’re ready to try RemoteFX….

Let’s begin with giving our RDS Host a RemoteFX 3D video adapter. In the Server Manager go to the Hyper-V host and right click on the RDS vm, click settings.

Click Add Hardware select the RemoteFX 3D Video Adapter and click add:

The RemoteFX 3D video adapter will be added, you can then choose the maximum monitors and resolution options (for me 1 monitor 1280 x 1024). Click Apply:

Just to be sure memory will not be a bottleneck we’ll set dynamic memory (see this post for more info). Select Memory, select memory and set Maximum RAM. Click OK:

On the host, the guest and the client, the following firewall settings must be changed, Remote Desktop – RemoteFX select all 3 (just to be sure ;-)):

The last settings need to be made on the RD Session Host and the client computer. First the RDSH go to start, run and enter gpedit.msc press enter:

In the Group Policy Editor Console go to Computer Settings, Administrative templates, Windows Components, Remote Desktop Services, Remote Desktop Session Host, Remote Session Environment, and double click on Configure RemoteFX:

In the Configure RemoteFX window select enable and click OK:

That’s it for the RD Session Host. For the client we can do some tuning. Go to start run gpedit.msc press enter, and go to the same folder as you did on the RDSH. So go to Computer Settings, Administrative templates, Windows Components, Remote Desktop Services, Remote Desktop Session Host, Remote Session Environment, and double click on Optimize visual Experience when using RemoteFX:

In the Optimize visual exprience… window select enable and set Screen capture Rate and Screen Capture Quality to Higest, and press OK:

Your al set to test RemoteFX on a RD Session Host now! Start a mstsc.exe and go to experience. Set the performance on LAN (10 Mbps or higher):

On the general tab set the name to the name of your RD Session Host and click connect to set up a connection. To check if RemoteFX is installed correctly do the following check. Log in to the RD Session host with administrative rights. Go to start, administrative tools and click on event viewer. In event viewer go to Application and Services\Logs\Microsoft\Windows\RemoteDesktopServices-RemoteDesktopSession Manager. If the your client computer is connected to the RDSH by using RemoteFX for Remote Desktop Session Host, Event ID 1000 will be shown:

The installation of RemoteFX is completed! Hope it works as good for you as it did for me! See you on the next post!

Download PDF of Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3

Step by step installation guide installing a RD Session Host with RemoteFX (Part 2)

by Arjan | Nov 25, 2010 | RemoteFX

In part 1 of this post we installed a Hyper-V host and a Server 2008 R2 VM on it. To be able to install and use RemoteFX it is necessary to add  the Remote Desktop Session Host Role to the VM. In this post we’ll do that, step by step.

To enlarge the screenshots you can click on them!

Log in to the guest VM (WINSRRDSH01 in my case) and go to start, administrative tools and click on Server Management:

Click on Roles and on the right side on Add Roles. The Select Server Roles window will show. Select Remote Desktop Services and click Next:

The Remote Desktop Services Window shows. Click Next:

The Select Role Services Window Shows. Select Remote Desktop Session Host and click Next:

The authentication Method for RDSH will show. select Do not … (you can change this if you want) and click Next:

The Specify Licensing Mode window will show. Select Configure Later and click Next:

The Select User Groups Allowed Access to this RDSH server window will show. click Next and leave Administrators as default:

The Configure Client Experience window will show. Select all three options and click Next:

The Confirm Installation Selections window will show. Click Install.

After installation the installation results window will show. Click Close

And click Yes to reboot the server:

After the reboot log on to the server, and let the installation do it’s final thing. The last window will show. Click Close:

This is the end of part 2. We’ve now installed the Hyper-V server role, and a Guest VM running Server 2008 R2 SP1 with the Remote Desktop Session Host Role installed.

In the Part 3 of this post we’ll finally go to configure RemoteFX.

Download the PDF for Part 2 Here

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

by Arjan | Nov 25, 2010 | RemoteFX

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.

Download this post in PDF