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Automatically Log in to new session on Broker Farm

Unanswered Automatically Log in to new session on Broker Farm

  • Friday, March 15, 2013 8:17 PM
     
     
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    I've set up a Remote Desktop Services broker and farm with just two hosts (server1 and server2), and everything works good except for one issue.  The users can initially log in to their RDS session, their application that launches when they log in launches, etc., life is good.  I then go and simulate a server failure by powering off server1.  The clients connected to server1 go through their timeout stage, and then go about re-connecting and will find the second server in the farm (server2) but instead of just automatically logging in like they do with the initial connection, they get to the Windows login screen and have to wait for input.  Since this is not a clustered fail-over type of setup (I only have Windows Server 2008 R2 standard at my disposal), I understand they're going to get new session and not continue with their same session, and I'm perfectly fine with that.  What I'd like to do do is make it so it just logs in like it did when they double-click the rdp connection with saved credentials, and not have them have to enter anything when it connects to the server that's still up.  Is that even possible with the Microsoft RDP client?  Or am I just stuck with the behavior that I'm experiencing in my testing?  Thanks for any information.
     

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  • Saturday, March 16, 2013 11:38 AM
     
     
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    Hi,

    Unfortunately if one of the RDS servers fails then all sessions connected to that server are lost. Users will be able to login again on any of the remaining RDS servers for a new session. This is default behavior, there is no session level HA or clustering for RDS.  The load balancing mechanism in RDS will connect the user to the next available server. To address this you can do the sizing based on N+1 meaning where N is number of servers required for the amount of users and +1 is an additional server that can handle the sessions of one failing server.

    If you save the user credentials in the Remote Desktop Client then the session will automatically logon with the saved credentials:

    http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/saving-your-logon-credentials-in-remote-desktop-connection

    Danny van Dam, Citrix CCIA/CCEE Microsoft MCSE Server Infrastructure/MCSE Desktop Infrastructure/MCSA Server 2008, Cisco CCNA, VMware VCP 3/4/5 http://www.citrix-guru.com http://www.rds-support.eu

     
  • Monday, March 18, 2013 9:34 AM
     
     
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    Or use GPO instead.

    http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2007/04/19/how-to-enable-single-sign-on-for-my-terminal-server-connections.aspx

     
  • Tuesday, March 19, 2013 6:28 PM
     
     
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    Thanks for the reply.  I think that maybe I wasn't exactly clear with what my specific issue actually is.  I understand that all sessions are lost, and new sessions need to be established on the other server.  I have the remote desktop client set to save the user credentials, and it all works flawlessly if I double-click the rdp file to initiate the connection. This issue is specific to being connected to one server and that server having a failure, and then having the remote desktop client automatically log in to the new session on the other server.  I can have both servers up and the connection will load balance and send the client connection to one server or the other using the saved credentials and not prompting for any login info.  I can have either server 1 or server 2 up, and the other down and if I double-click my rdp file (which is referencing the farm name), it will connect to the server that's up and log in using the saved credentials.  However, when I have both servers up, and connect to the farm, it will log in to either server1 or server2 as expected using the saved credentials, and then when I power the server off to simulate the failure, it then gives the notice that the session has been lost and it's trying to re-connect.  It will then connect to the other server that's still up, but it's at the log in prompt.  If I either wait for it to time out, or just cancel out of that log in screen, I can then double-click my saved rdp file and it will log right in using the saved credentials without prompting me.  I'm assuming that this is the case because the remote desktop client remains open during the whole re-connect portion, and thus does not re-read any configuration options for saved credentials, etc?  I'm also assuming that it's probably behaving as expected, or so it use the saved credentials to log in to the new session on the new server, even though the remote desktop client was never closed and re-initiated?