WHAT IS REMOTE DESKTOP

What is Remote Desktop?

The term Remote Desktop refers to a computer that connects remotely to another, shares control of its mouse and keyboard, and views its display. Remote Desktop is commonly accessed through port 3389.

You can create a remote desktop connection with an operating system utility, such as the Remote Desktop included with Windows professional versions.

Or, you can use a third-party remote desktop application or service, such as Team viewer or VNC Note

The Remote Desktop included with Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium cannot act as a host. It may still be used to remotely access another computer, but those machines cannot connect to the local computer. Hosting from one of these versions of Windows requires a third-party program, like those mentioned above.

How do I open a Windows Remote Desktop Connection?

To open Remote Desktop in Windows Professional, follow these steps.

1. Click start
2. Type remote desktop, and click Remote Desktop connection in the search results or press Enter.

or

1. In the Start menu, click Windows Accessories, then click Remote Desktop Connection.

or

1. Click Start.
2. Type mstsc and press Enter.

In the Remote Desktop Connection window, type the computer address you want to remotely connect to and the user name you want to use. For advanced options, like those shown below, click Show Options at the bottom of the window.

Note

To remotely connect to a work or school computer, your network administrator must have set up Remote Desktop connection, and you need the correct computer address and user name.

WHAT IS AN IP ADDRESS

An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label such as 192.0.2.1 that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two main functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing.

WHAT IS IP VIRTUALIZATION?

An IP address that is shared among multiple domain names or multiple servers. Virtual IP addressing enables one IP address to be used when multiple websites are hosted on one server. Virtual IPs are also widely used to balance incoming traffic to multiple servers. The incoming packets are sent to the virtual IP and forwarded to the real IP address of the server targeted to respond.

This process is refered to as IP virtualization.

Virtual IP

When virtual IP is enabled and configured on the Windows server, each configured application running in a session appears to have a unique address. Users access these applications on a Citrix Virtual Apps server in the same way they access any other published application. A process requires virtual IP in either of the following cases:

• The process uses a hard-coded TCP port number
• The process uses Windows sockets and requires a unique IP address or a specified TCP port number

To determine if an application needs to use virtual IP addresses:

1. Obtain the TCPView tool from Microsoft. This tool lists all applications that bind specific IP addresses and ports.
2. Disable the Resolve IP Addresses feature so that you see the addresses instead of host names.
3. Launch the application and use TCPView to see which IP addresses and ports are opened by the application and which process names are opening these ports.
4. Configure any processes that open the IP address of the server, 0.0.0.0, or 127.0.0.1.
5. To ensure that an application does not open the same IP address on a different port, launch an additional instance of the application.

How Microsoft Remote Desktop (RD) IP virtualization works

• Virtual IP addressing must be enabled on the Microsoft server.For example, in a Windows Server 2016 environment, from Server Manager, expand Remote Desktop Services > RD Session Host Connections to enable the RD IP Virtualization feature and configure the settings to dynamically assign IP addresses using the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server on a per-session or per-program basis. See the Microsoft documentation for instructions.
• After the feature is enabled, at session start-up, the server requests dynamically assigned IP addresses from the DHCP server.
• The RD IP Virtualization feature assigns IP addresses to remote desktop connections per-session or per-program. If you assign IP addresses for multiple programs, they share a per-session IP address.
• After an address is assigned to a session, the session uses the virtual address rather than the primary IP address for the system whenever the following calls are made: bind¸closesocket¸connect, WSAConnect, WSAAccept, getpeername, getsockname, sendto, WSASendTo, WSASocketW, gethostbyaddr, getnameinfo, getaddrinfo.

When using the Microsoft IP virtualization feature within the Remote Desktop session hosting configuration, applications are bound to specific IP addresses by inserting a “filter” component between the application and Winsock function calls. The application then sees only the IP address it should use. Any attempt by the application to listen for TCP or UDP communications is bound to its allocated virtual IP address (or loopback address) automatically, and any originating connections opened by the application originate from the IP address bound to the application.

In functions that return an address (such as GetAddrInfo(), which is controlled by a Windows policy), if the local host IP address is requested, virtual IP looks at the returned IP address and changes it to the virtual IP address of the session. Applications that attempt to get the IP address of the local server through such name functions see only the unique virtual IP address assigned to that session. This IP address is often used in subsequent socket calls, such as bind or connect. For more information about Windows policies, see RDS IP Virtualization in Windows Server.

Often, an application requests to bind to a port for listening on the address 0.0.0.0. When an application does this and uses a static port, you cannot launch more than one instance of the application. The virtual IP address feature also looks for 0.0.0.0 in these call types and changes the call to listen on the specific virtual IP address, which enables more than one application to listen on the same port on the same computer because they are all listening on different addresses. The call is changed only if it is in an ICA session and the virtual IP address feature is enabled. For example, if two instances of an application running in different sessions both try to bind to all interfaces (0.0.0.0) and a specific port (such as 9000), they are bound to VIPAddress1:9000 and VIPAddress2:9000 and there is no conflict.

WHAT IS WINDOWS SERVER 2019?

Windows Server 2019 is the ninth version of the Windows Server operating system by Microsoft, as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It is the third version of the server operating system based on the Windows 10 platform, after Windows Server 2016.

What is the use of Windows Server 2019?

Windows Server 2019 is the operating system that bridges on-premises environments with Azure, adding additional layers of security while helping you modernise your applications and infrastructure

FEATURES OF WINDOWS SERVER 2019

Windows Server 2019 has the following new features:

• Container services: Support for Kubernetes (stable; v1. Support for Tigera Calico for Windows. …
• Storage: Storage Spaces Direct. Storage Migration Service. …
• Security: Shielded Virtual Machines. …
• Administration: Windows Admin Center.

ADVANTAGES OF IP VIRTUALIZATION

businesses (SMBs) are relying more heavily than ever on their IT infrastructures, but budgets and resources haven’t always kept pace with those demands. Virtualization can help organizations “do more with less” by consolidating systems, improving resource utilization and streamlining IT operations. Are SMBs taking maximum advantage of this proven technology?

ActualTech Media conducted a study in early 2015 to find out. The State of SMB IT Infrastructure Survey found that one-third of SMBs — the largest portion of the survey group — have virtualized 70 percent or more of their servers. However, 21 percent are less than 10 percent virtualized (the next largest group) and 14 percent are less than 30 percent virtualized. In all, 50 percent of respondents reported that less than half of their environment is virtual.

This represents a significant opportunity for SMBs. Virtualization enables organizations to create multiple virtual servers on a single piece of hardware — as far as the system is concerned, each virtual server is a separate machine. According to VMware, server virtualization delivers 80 percent greater utilization of server resources and up to 50 percent savings in capital and operating costs. Reduced server maintenance burdens allows IT departments to do more with less staff, and better utilize staff skill sets.

Virtualization also enables applications to deployed in minutes rather than days or weeks. IT can move server workloads as needed, improving performance and providing for replication and automatic failover to minimize downtime.

Some organizations have not virtualized mission-critical applications due to concerns about performance and availability since multiple virtual machines share compute, storage and network resources. However, the latest server and storage hardware and virtualization technologies are capable of supporting the most demanding workloads.

That holds true for IP communications. Some years ago, Voice over IP (VoIP) was not a good candidate for virtualization due to the predictable performance needed for real-time communications. Now, however, virtualization has become a mainstream deployment option for IP communications.

ShoreTel has offered a virtualization option since version 14.2 of its Unified Communications (UC) platform. ShoreTel virtual appliances put all the functionality of ShoreTel switches and hardware appliances in software designed to run in VMware environments. It supports all ShoreTel UC components, including call control, SIP trunking and collaboration applications.

ShoreTel allows customers to take advantage of virtual servers they already own and operate, in a fully customizable deployment model that maximizes existing investments. In addition to improving utilization, virtualization enables customers to quickly and easily move ShoreTel UC services to another server in the event of a hardware failure.

In addition, customers have the flexibility to mix and match hardware-based and virtual appliances, all managed using a single web-based interface. Customers can select the UC deployment model that best suits their business and infrastructure needs while reducing complexity and increasing the availability, scalability and reliability of their communications systems.

IPC has proven experience deploying ShoreTel in virtualized environments. Let us help you leverage the cost, flexibility and business continuity advantages of virtualization for your ShoreTel system.

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