The RemoteAPP service lets you use applications hosted on our server and work with them as if they were running locally.
In this article, we will show you the steps needed to install and configure the Microsoft RemoteAPP service on a Windows server. For this example, you will need a Windows Server 2016 server, which will act as both a domain controller and a RemoteApp server.
Installing Active Directory
The Microsoft RemoteAPP service requires Active Directory to manage the users and groups that will connect to the service. Active Directory can be installed on the same server or separately on another server.
Information
In another article, we explained How to configure Active Directory. You can follow the link above for this setup, as it is fully applicable to installing and configuring RemoteAPP.
Installing Remote Desktop Services
To use RemoteApp on your server, you will need to install the Remote Desktop roles. Below, we explain the process step by step.
Open the Windows menu and select "Server Manager".
Click "Add Roles and features".
Click "Next".
Select "Remote Desktop Services installation".
For the deployment type, select "Standard deployment".
For the deployment scenario, select "Session-based desktop deployment".
Click "Next".
Click the arrow to add our server to install the "RD Connection Broker" role.
Click the arrow to add your server to install the "RD Web Access Role Service" role. Also, select the "Install the RD Web Access role service on the RD Connection Broker Server" checkbox.
Click the arrow to add our server to install the "RD Session Host role service" role.
Select the checkbox to restart the server automatically and click "Deploy".
You will then see a window like the one below showing the installation progress.
The server will restart during the installation process.
Finally, under "Status", you will see that everything has been installed successfully ("Succeded").
Creating a user and group in Active Directory
To control which users can access RemoteAPP, it is important to create a dedicated group in Active Directory, as it will later be used for the collection in RemoteAPP.
Open "Active Directory Users and Computers" and, under "Users", click "New" - "User".
Fill in the form and click "Next".
Set the user's password and clear all the checkboxes.
Now you need to create the group for the users who will be able to access RemoteApp. Under "Users", click "New" - "Group".
Fill in the form and click "Ok".
To allow the user created earlier to connect through RemoteAPP, you need to add them to the group you created. To do this, right-click the user and select "Add to a group".
Find the group you created and click "Ok".
Configuring application publishing
In Server Manager, click "Remote Desktop Services".
The first step is to create a collection. To do this, select "Create session collections".
Click "Next".
Enter a name and description and click "Next".
Click the arrow to add the server to "RD Session Host" for the collection we are creating.
Add the user group we created earlier in Active Directory, whose members will have access to the collection.
Disable the "Enable user profile disks" option.
Click "Create".
Once complete, you will see a screen like this one. Click "Close".
Publishing an application
To finish the configuration, you need to publish an application so that users can access it through RemoteApp. To do this, in Server Manager, click "Remote Desktop Services" and select the collection created earlier from the menu on the left. Under "REMOTEAPP PROGRAMS", select "Tasks" and "Publish RemoteApp Programs".
Select the program you want to publish. For this example, we select "Paint".
Click "Publish".
Once complete, you will see a screen like the one below with the status "Published". Click "Close".
Connecting to RemoteAPP to use the published application
To connect to RemoteAPP, you need to access our application server's URL. In our case, this is https://9e2ead6c-bdc7-4f57-ac38-24cecbb0ffe7.clouding.host/rdweb. If you have not configured the server with a domain, you can access it at "https://ip_pública/rdweb".
Once the URL has loaded, you can connect using the user created earlier that you added to the "RemoteAPP" group and click "Sign In".
Once you have signed in, the published applications will appear. Click an application's icon to start loading it.
Enter your credentials again and click "Continue".
Finally, you can see our published application loading.
Information
Ports 80 and 443 must be open in the client panel. How to create a firewall rule in the client panel.
Also, if you want to secure your new Microsoft RemoteAPP server with an SSL certificate, you can follow this article: Installing a Let’s Encrypt certificate on Windows Server.
We hope this article has helped you. If you have any questions about this or anything else related to your servers on Clouding, email us at soporte@clouding.io. We are here to help! 😉