Remote Desktop Services and Bring Your Own Device
Remote Desktop Services is a core role of Windows Server; it was called Terminal
Services before Windows Server 2008 R 2 , but it was renamed to better reflect the
range of its functionality. If you are familiar with Terminal Services, you know that it
was focused on providing a complete desktop to remote users that was hosted on a
server operating system. Each connected user had their own Windows session on the
server operating system, which provided them with a level of isolation from other
users connected to the same server operating system. The remote connection was
enabled through the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). RDP is a core part of all
Windows operating systems, and it is also what enables the ability to Remote Desktop
to a desktop operating system remotely. A Terminal Server, or Remote Desktop
Session Host (RDSH) as it is now known, provides a desktop to the remote user—
including the Start menu, desktop icons, Internet Explorer/Microsoft Edge, and the
various applications installed on the server operating system, which could include
Microsoft Office and line-of-business (LOB) applications. To the end user, the
experience is no different than that of a desktop operating system; however, actions
that affect all users, such as reboots and application installations, are blocked in a
session virtualization environment.
Figure 11. 1 shows a typical session virtualization solution with RDSH. In this example,
the session host is running as a virtual machine on a Hyper-V server, but it could also
be running on a physical host directly. As you can see, many different users connect
for their own desktop. As I cover later in this chapter, while RDSH provides a desktop
environment, other technologies are required to give users a full experience such as
profile, applications, and their data.