Remote Desktop Web Access

Remote Desktop Web Access (RD Web Access) integrates with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) to display the icons of authorized RemoteApp programs and VMs in a portal displayed in Internet Explorer and launch the connections. A user authorizes against the portal and can see the icons for all the remote resources allocated to them by the administrator. When he or she clicks an icon, it creates and starts a RemoteApp program in much the same way it would if the RDP file were stored on the user’s computer. Using the new forms-based authentication in RDS, after a user authenticates to a portal once, his or her credentials can be used for any resource the user is authorized to access.

When a user starts a RemoteApp program, a session is started on the RD Session Host server that hosts the RemoteApp program, or the VM backing the VM icon. The RD Web Access server does not start the application. It just displays the application icon, creates the RDP file for that application when the user double-clicks that icon, and then passes the RDP file to the user to start the application from the RD Session Host. RemoteApp programs and desktops started via RD Web Access do not display in the browser but in their own windows and are independent of the browser window. Closing the browser won’t disconnect or terminate the connections to the RD Session Host or VM.

Remote Desktop Web Access has many benefits, including the following:

■ Users can access RemoteApp programs from a website over the Internet or from an intranet. To start a RemoteApp program, they just double-click the program icon.

■ With the new Web SSO feature, after the user authenticates to the website, those credentials are stored and provided for any other connections they initiate—even connections on other servers or other farms.

■ RD Web Access can display resources from more than one farm and aggregate them into a single window.

■ RD Web Access will display only the resources assigned to a particular person.

■ By using RD Web Access, there is much less administrative overhead than that required to maintain and distribute RDP files for connecting to an RD Session Host farm. You can easily deploy programs from a central location and don’t have to worry about ensuring that RDP files containing connection information are up to date.

■ RD Web Access includes Remote Desktop Web Connection, which enables users to connect remotely to the desktop of any computer where they have Remote Desktop access from the RD Web Access portal.

■ RD Web Access works with minimal configuration, but the RD Web Access web page includes a customizable Web Part, which can be incorporated into a customized web page or a Microsoft SharePoint site.

That’s how RD Web Access benefits people using a browser . . . but in Windows Server 2008 R2, this role service supports even people connecting without a browser. RemoteApp and Desktop Connections is a new feature in Windows 7 (it’s part of the operating system, not the RDP client, so it is not available in previous versions of Windows) that allows Remote- App and VM icons to be added to a client’s Start menu and started from there. The trick is that RD Web Access gets its information about which RemoteApp programs and desktops are available to which users from the publishing service on the RD Connection Broker and makes those resources available through a URL. One URL supports the website you see with a browser, and another supports connections delivered to RemoteApp and Desktop Connections.