Remote Desktop Services for Small Business
At my job, I need to manage several physical computers, which also hosts multiple virtual machines. I don't need to access them remotely …
Overview
What is Remote Desktop Services?
Remote Desktop Services from Microsoft is virtual desktop and remote user session technology.
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What is Remote Desktop Services?
Remote Desktop Services from Microsoft is virtual desktop and remote user session technology.
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10215 Demo 51 Installing RDS Gateway Server.avi
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What is Remote Desktop Services?
Remote Desktop Services Video
Windows Virtual Desktop Remote Desktop Services
Remote Desktop Services Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Remote Desktop Services from Microsoft is virtual desktop and remote user session technology.
Reviewers rate Screen sharing and File transfer highest, with a score of 9.3.
The most common users of Remote Desktop Services are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Reviews
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December 31, 2023
RDS - remote access at its best
We utilize Remote Desktop Services for all of our off-site remote access to our company server for daily work functions. This allows us to perform our necessary work, use our own personal computers or computers that don’t function with programs that are MS based, and do so from remote locations all over the country. We have had issues with some log-outs not happening therefore not allowing individuals to log back in, and when internet connectivity is down at our host location not to be able to connect.
- Remote Desktop access
- Server access
- Sharing computer for IT issues
- Display setting changes for monitor viewing
- Shared program access for users (i.e. DraftSight)
- Printer addition without it having to be in the host location
November 13, 2021
Great Windows built in remote access app
Remote Desktop Services is a handy feature in Windows OS like Windows Server, Windows 7, etc. It is being used in our organization to connect to our server and local PCs. The main problem it addresses is to let a user/administrator take remote of another PC/server to perform various works like configuration, troubleshooting, etc.
- Easy to use.
- Good customization options like the screen size of remote session window, remote audio settings, etc.
- The Window of the Remote desktop connection sometimes does not get maximized to full size sometimes and it is hard to make it sometimes. There should be an option to display a full-size window for easier working.
June 27, 2021
Work remotely from home or anywhere
We have used it for years to allow our Sales Team to get access back to our main office network. This was much more versatile, secure, and faster than using a VPN to access files and programs directly. When Covid hit we were able to have users work from home and simply remote into their workstations at their desks and work as usual. With that said we are using the Remote Desktop Gateway as well for security. I recently looked into using Citrix but the capabilities were the same but the cost was much higher.
- Access your company PC at work, no loading software on offsite or personal PCs.
- Secure connection and all documents stay on company PC at the office.
- Works great even over a 2mb internet connection.
- Windows already has the client software installed by default.
- Bad internet connections can cause it to disconnect with no retries. This has got better recently so not sure if Microsoft has made a recent change.
June 20, 2019
Remote Desktop Services is something that just works
Remote Desktop Services is being used by many different departments, between direct desktop access or access to a remote terminal server.
Remote Desktop Services addresses software that does not tolerate being run over a WAN connection. Some of the Vendors we use for software requires direct contact to SQL, so we secure that and only allow local access.
Remote Desktop Services addresses software that does not tolerate being run over a WAN connection. Some of the Vendors we use for software requires direct contact to SQL, so we secure that and only allow local access.
- The ability to have custom resolutions or screen setups.
- Remote printers.
- Similar look and layout of any Windows computer.
- Remote file sharing could be easier.
- Some better compression for laggy connections.
- Better security options.
August 21, 2018
Best essential software to connect to remote Desktop
Remote Desktop Services is being used by our entire organization. It solves the purpose of connecting to production systems through our local desktop. I also connect to my PC at the office from my home if I have to login from home.
I connect to production systems using Remote Desktop to start, stop and deploy applications on the production system. It works seamlessly.
- Remote Desktop Services provides seamless connection to production systems while running applications.
- It provides a fast and reliable connection while connecting to the remote systems and execute commands
- Secure and 100 percent robust. Never experienced any issues
- Whole desktop can be mirrored and it feels like you are physically working on the remote systems.
- Remote Desktop Services team needs to focus on improvement in the magnification of remote images.
- Remote Desktop Services team should focus on the requirements of internet services speeds while connecting to remote machines.
- Team should work on improving performance when accessing images and videos so that the chipping won't occur.
June 06, 2018
Remote Desktop Services Makes The Connection
We as an entire company started using Remote Desktop Services about 6 years ago. We wanted to provide a way for multiple staff working outside the office to have access to data files on the network. The simplest method we came up with was to setup Remote Desktop Services with Microsoft Terminal Services. All the applications would be installed on a single server. This server also has all our network drives mapped providing access to all network data files. Our staff then can remote into this server using Remote Desktop Services. The server now acts like a terminal giving our staff full use of the applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suites to work on the data files located on the network drives.
- Remote Desktop Services does an excellent job in providing a way for our staff to be working outside the office as if they're actually sitting inside the office. As long as the staff has an internet connection and a computer, he can use Remote Desktop Services to access files on our network.
- Remote Desktop Services also eliminates a need to have a very fast internet connection to access files on the company network. Once a Remote Desktop Service session is established, the only bandwidth it takes up is the transfer of images you see on the display. It's like surfing on the web because you are using the company server as the resource to run the applications.
- Remote Desktop Services provides a way for users to transfer files back & forth to/from staff's offsite laptop to/from the company network . There would be times when staff forget to copy a particular file onto the laptop for a presentation. So the way to retrieve the data from the network is to establish a Remote Desktop Session and then using Windows standar copy & paste feature to transfer the file from the network onto their laptop for use.
- Remote Desktop Services currently does not support multiple monitors on the terminal server. Unlike other applications such as TeamViewer, there's no feature to toggle between multiple screens even if they were connected to the terminal server.
- Remote Desktop Services should provide an option to scale up or down the screen size after a connection is established. Currently you can only adjust the screen size prior to a connection is established. So you'll have to take a best guess at what display screen resolution will fit best on your screen.
- Remote Desktop Services should offer some kind of menu to send special key strokes like Ctrl+Alt+Del to the terminal server. Currently the substitute for that particular combination is Ctrl+Alt+End. But I have yet to discover a replacement for other combination keystrokes such as Alt+PrintScrn.
September 26, 2017
RDS: A Fast & Furios Connection to far "friends"
It's used by the whole organization. We are mainly using it to allow us the possibility of connecting to a remote server on which are standing the Data Warehouse we are managing. Sometimes we also use it to connect to our servers while we are standing inside the customer organization.
- Easy Configuration
- Fast Connection
- Very Good Reliability
- Low Memory and Resource Usage
- The GUI interface is outdated
- Sometimes there are unexpected crashes during work sessions
- Difficult to customize
- Not really intuitive
October 24, 2016
Remote Desktop Services Review
Remote Desktop Services (RDS) is used in my company to provide remote access to data and services for people working outside the office.
- RDS is fast. Having tried various remote access options, I have found RDS to be far superior to VNC offerings.
- RDS is built into Windows so it does not take extra software installation and setup.
- While it works well as it is, it is possible to further secure the connection by routing it through an ssh tunnel using simple port forwarding.
- I would like to see stronger encryption for the connection without the need for an ssh tunnel.
October 12, 2015
To RDS or Not to RDS? That is the question!
We currently use Microsoft's Windows 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services to provide a centralized interface from which to access data in our data center. The entire company uses this to access our accounting and project management software. This keeps us from having duplicate systems in different locations from which disparaged information must be combined. Additionally, since the Remote Desktop Services is in the same data center and network segment as the backend systems, access to data is much faster and more reliable.
- While it is not to the level of Citrix, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services does a good job with video compression.
- Universal printing works very well.
- Management via group policy allows me to lockdown our environment to keep users from making changes that might affect the entire system.
- I think that while the compression rate it good, there is always room for improvement. I would like to see the RDP protocol skinned down even further and made more efficient.
- Dynamic screen scaling would be a nice way to utilize the most screen real estate when switching from an undocked connection to a docked connection with larger monitors.
October 07, 2015
A World Driven By RemoteApp
Remote Desktop Services (RDS) is used to help publish a line of business applications to nearly every device. We use it across the entire organization and even with a few support vendors. RDS helps solves issues by simplifying the IT infrastructure and reducing network traffic. Software maintenances and Windows updates are more controlled. I only have to upgrade a few servers versus the entire enterprise of remote desktop, laptop, and tablets.
- Remote Desktop Services (RDS) is fast and light on bandwidth. With increased compression, RDS is really only sending screen-shots with keyboard and mouse events. No SQL connection across the LAN or WAN. All Client-Server applications can be set up locally in a small network.
- Maintaining a line of business applications in your IT infrastructure is a breeze. Once set up, users can connect to a published business application from nearly every device. And with so many companies going to a “Bring Your Own Device” model, end users can purchase an endpoint device such as a laptop or tablet (Windows, Android, or MAC) and simply launch an icon from either the start menu or desktop. It can also be launched from a web browser. Really cool stuff!!
- A Remote Desktop Services farm instance gives the system administrators a little more flexibility by allowing the IT department to schedule a maintenance window to perform software or Windows updates to that server while new connections are routed to the other servers. This is usually done with a load balance device that either makes connections via Round Robin or CPU usages. Load balancer controls [based on] which server is available for connections.
- In a few cases, I have seen where applications may have screen flicker. Or if application is running a large report and query the database, the application screen will ghost out while waiting to response.
- I have also seen that a few applications that have detailed information will not appear under the remote app but will appear in the full desktop mode.
October 06, 2015
Microsoft RDS - Relatively Decent Solution...
We are currently hosting three separate farms across approximately 20 servers. One farm dedicated to a published shared remote desktop (RDSH), one farm dedicated to hosing a number of RemoteApps (HEAT, Exchange Management Console, etc), and a dedicated RemoteApp farm for Elite Enterprise. In conjunction with the Remote Desktop Gateway server, Remote Desktop Connection Broker, and Remote Desktop Web Access server, we give users the ability to do their work from wherever they are most comfortable and ease the upgrade burden on our staff when it comes to upgrading particularly cumbersome software like Elite Enterprise. The applications available to our users via our RDS platform cover about 30-50% of our employees with plans to potentially expand that further as budget and time dictate.
- Relative ease of setup: in comparison to some of the other solutions on the market (Citrix, etc.), Remote Desktop Services is rather easy to set up and get configured in your environment.
- Feature set: Microsoft offers a good deal of the same features many competitors offer in the same space including a mobile app and the ability to have a "native" app feel for a remote application.
- Inexpensive Licensing: in comparison to other solutions on the market Remote Desktop Services is inexpensive.
- Move LOB applications closer to their server counterparts: this goes for all remote solutions, but if you have a line of business application that makes a great deal of calls across the network to your data center, your remote office users will likely benefit from the performance and stability side by moving those client side applications into the data center.
- No centralized management: unlike other products on the market, Remote Desktop Services in 2008r2 provides no single management console. Users are managed through a console on the connection broker, web apps are managed on a per server basis (even when those servers belong to a farm).
- Image Management: because no use of an agent like PNTools is made, bringing up servers and adding them to the farm is inconvenient. Static IPs are a must and round-robin load balancing is really your only option with the connection broker. Updating a farm of 5+ servers becomes a chore, but still easier than updating 2000+ machines.
- Still a very green product: while Microsoft offers a lot of the same features as the big guys, it's obvious that Remote Desktop Services is still in it's infancy and has a lot of room for growth. I have discovered and requested fixes for a number of bugs in the mobile app alone - something about the QA process for these apps seems to be lacking.