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No RemoteApps displayed if one RemoteApp Server goes down

Answered No RemoteApps displayed if one RemoteApp Server goes down

  • Wednesday, December 15, 2010 7:11 PM
     
     
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    Right now I have the following config:

    RDSWA1 & RDSWA2 in an F5 load-balanced web farm.  Both are configured for "One or more RemoteApp sources" and have listed all the Session Hosts

    RDSGW1 & RDSGW2 in an F5 load-balanced gateway farm.

    RDSSH1 & RDSSH2 each hosting different applications.  For PoC reasons, I have SH1 hosting a Calc RemoteApp and SH2 hosting a WordPad RemoteApp.

    Is it expected that if SH1 goes down, the web servers will display no RemoteApps at all?  I would expect the Web Servers to at least allow users to connect to WordPad.

     

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  • Wednesday, December 15, 2010 7:23 PM
     
     
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    I'd also expect at least your wordapp to show up. try deleting the session host entries, refreshing the webpage, then adding them again. Keep the RDSSSH1 down and see if only one application shows up.

    I experienced something the opposite, but I have a connection broker in place.

    I restored my session host to a snapshot prior to installing the application, but the application was still showing up in the RDSWA website. I pointed RDSWA directly to my RDSSH server and the application was gone. When I pointed it back to the Connection Broker it was back again (but definitly uninstalled.) I removed the RDSSH server entry from the connection broker and all the application were gone on my RSSWA website, when I added the RDSSH entry back in my connection broker the applicationw was gone from the website and everything was showing accuratly.

     

    Prashant Sinha Systems Engineer American University Washington DC
     
  • Wednesday, December 15, 2010 7:29 PM
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    Tim,

    that is weird. YOu should see Wordpad. Refresh IIS on rdwa1 and 2 please and tell me what you see.

     

    Hope this helps,

    Kristin L. Griffin

    Co-Author of the Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit (and a SUPER BIG fan of the Microsoft RDV Team!!!) 

    My RDS blog: blog.kristinlgriffin.com

    The new Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services Resource Kit will be out in December 2010!
     
  • Wednesday, December 15, 2010 8:40 PM
     
     
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    So I was wrong in my initial statement.  If the web servers are up and running and one of the SH's goes down, the RemoteApp simply stops working - which is fine.  If, however, the web servers have to 'rebuild' the page while one SH is down - either by iisreset or by changing the list of RemoteApp sources - all RemoteApps will disappear.

    Which leads me to believe the following - and hopefully someone can confirm or deny this:

    When a SH/RemoteApp Source is added or removed or when an iisreset occurs, the RDWA servers actually query all the SH's and create some kind of database that says what users or groups should see what RemoteApps.  When one SH that is in the list is down, that DB cannot be updated and so nothing is displayed.  On the other hand, since that DB is there, if an SH goes down but the website and/or DB isn't rebuilt, the RemoteApp still appears but cannot connect.

    *Edit - it also seems that if a new user is added to a group which is supposed to have access to a RemoteApp, and that user has never logged into Web Access, and that user logs into Web Access while that SH is down, none of their RemoteApps work, regardless of whether those RemoteApps are on up or down SH's

    I guess I'm just trying to understand how, exactly, the list of RemoteApps is populated when a user logs in because its clear that the SH's aren't queried every time a user logs in, but since I've been clearing my IE cache after every test, there's nothing stored locally on the client.

     
  • Friday, December 17, 2010 12:21 AM
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    Hi Tim,

    Your analysis of what is happeing is pretty much spot-on. Based on your description, this sounds like a known issue in Server 2008 R2 RD Web Access.

    One way to work around this would be to install the RD Connection Broker role, configure RDWA to get its resources from the Connection Broker, then configure the Connection Broker to get resources from the two RDSH servers. This uses a different code-path in RDWA, which I believe does not have the same issue.

    Travis Howe | RDS Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/rds/default.aspx
     
  • Monday, August 06, 2012 6:41 AM
     
     
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    Hi, there is a "refresh" period for the servers to get the new RemoteApp lists, you can set this in the Connection Broker, see this blog for details;
    http://www.360ict.nl/blog/refresh-on-remote-desktop-web-access/

    If you remove or add the remoteapp source, you can force this. We tested with resetting IIS and sometimes this will work, but not always. So i would recommend using a Connection Broker for your app list. There might be such an entry on your RD Session Hosts, im not sure, but you can look for it.


     
  • Monday, December 17, 2012 6:11 PM
     
     
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    Has this issue since been addressed?  I have seen the WMI rights issue, and could script for it, but I think that's not an optimal solution.  We have a production system where we lose money if clients cannot access the remoteapps, so its very important to remove this source of failure.  There are currently 5 servers providing apps to the RDWA page, and I have to remove them all from the configuration and add them back one by one to determine which server has the issue (and that gets the clients their icons back as soon as possible, except those on the affected server).  I will investigate the Connection Broker fix if thats the only way, but I was hoping Microsoft had corrected this issue directly. 
     
  • Monday, January 21, 2013 6:17 PM
     
     
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    OK, this issue is fixed for me.  I have had this issue several times over the past few months. I was well familiar with it this post (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverTS/thread/173d4546-e12f-47c1-ac66-8b4f69826892), I have had to reset the rights on WMI each time. I was reading up on this again this week, and looking at making the IIS change referenced in that other that post, as I had been treating the symptom but not the disease. On Friday this happened again, and correcting the WMI rights did not fix the issue. We wound up re-applying SP1 with a Microsoft engineer, and then he did the following, which appears to have fixed the issue. Perhaps the IIS identity stuff from that other post is the same sort of fix, but I thought I'd post this as an alternative solution. The MS engineer's name was Ritesh. Here's what he did: Full control rights for the iiswebpool\rdwebaccess account were applied to the c:\windows\web\rdweb\app_data\rdwebaccess.config file and the c:\windows\web\rdweb\pages\rdp folder on the RD Web Access portal server. This resolved the issue of one TS server's failure to report remoteaccess icons resulting in ALL system icons not being displayed. This scenario was successfully tested with Ritesh still on the line to confirm. I still have no fix for why the WMI rights disappeared in the first place.