Set up high availability (HA) on your RDS infrastructure (step by step) on Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2

9. High availability (HA) of RDS web access

9.1. Install web access on the 2nd RDS server

On your 2nd server, launch the Add Roles and Features Wizard and go to step : Server Roles.
At this point, deploy the "Remote Desktop Services" node and check the "Remote Desktop Web Access" box.

Click Install.

9.2. Clustering of web access

For web access to be highly available, we installed it on our 2 RDS servers.
However, for the user to seamlessly connect to one of these 2 web servers using the same domain name, we will first have to put them in a NLB cluster.

With NLB (Network Load Balancing), you will be able to :

automatically distribute the network load for the web access of your 2 RDS servers
obtain fault tolerance and offer automatic failover to another server in the event of a server failure currently being used by your users

In short, on your 2 RDS servers, first install the "Network Load Balancing" role (which corresponds to NLB).

Once NLB is installed on both servers, open the Network Load Balancing Manager and right-click "New Cluster" on the "Network Load Balancing Clusters" item.

To learn more about creating an NLB cluster, refer to our tutorial : Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2 - Create a web servers cluster with NLB.

Enter the name of your 1st RDS server and click Connect.
Information about the IP address of your RDS server is displayed.
Click Next.

Click "Add" to add a cluster IP address.
In other words, the IP address to which your users will connect to access one of your RDS web access.

As shown in the diagram at the beginning of the tutorial, we will use the IP address "10.0.0.105" for the RDS cluster.

At the next step, you will need to specify a cluster name.
Warning : in order for this name to be resolved by your clients, you will need to create the corresponding DNS record on your local DNS server.

For the cluster operation mode, choose "Multicast".

For port rules, change the default one and specify :

port range : from 443 to 443 (HTTPS)
protocols : TCP

For the rest, leave the default options.

Add your 2nd RDS server to your cluster by right-clicking "Add Host to Cluster" on your RDS cluster.

Enter the name of your 2nd RDS server and click Login.
Then, click Next.

The port rule is already set to 443 TCP.
Click Finish.

Once the configuration is complete, the state of the 2 servers will be : Converged.

On your local DNS server, don't forget to create the DNS record associated with :

Name : rds (the cluster name)
IP adress : 10.0.0.105 (the IP address of the cluster)

9.3. Add the 2nd web access to RDS deployment

To add your 2nd RDS web access to your RDS deployment, go to the RDS deployment overview and right-click "Add RD Web Access Servers" on "RD Web Access".

Select your 2nd RDS server again.

Confirm the addition of the server.

The wizard installs the "RD Web Access" role service of the remote server.

When the role service installation is complete, click Close.