Have had a few questions about Terminal Server through EBS and SBS RWW, so thought I would post a link over to the Microsoft KB on it and include the resolutions from the KB below. While not directly supported by design, here are the workarounds for both EBS 2008 and SBS 2008.
EBS 2008:
EBS 2008 does not support directly connecting to a Terminal Server through RWW. In larger environments, publishing a large number of connections through the Messaging Server’s TS Gateway may cause a resource spike on the server.
In environments where it is desired to have connectivity through the RWW page, there are several workarounds available:
1. Publish the Terminal Server’s RDP port (3389 by default) through TMG. See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc995085.aspx for more details.
2. Distribute .RDP files configured to use TS Gateway to end users.
3. Add a link for the Terminal Server in RWW. To do this, use the following steps:
- Log on to the Messaging Server directly using an account with administrative rights.
- Edit %ProgramFiles%\Windows Essential Business Server\Bin\webapp\Remote\App_Data\OrganizationLinks.XML in Notepad
- Add a Link tag in the Gadget Section using the format:
<Link DisplayText=”TS” Url=https://<REMOTEURL>/Remote/tsweb.aspx?targetMachine=<TSNAME> _locID=”useTS” />
Where <REMOTEURL> is the FQDN of your RWW server and <TSNAME> is the host name of the internal Terminal Server you are trying to access. For example:
<Link DisplayText=”TS” Url=https://remote.contoso.com/Remote/tsweb.aspx?targetMachine=MyTS _locID=”useTS” />
SBS 2008:
The Small Business Server 2008 (SBS 2008) version of RWW does support adding a registry key to reveal Terminal Servers in the domain (see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc527532(WS.10).aspx). This registry setting has no effect in EBS.
Example OrganizationalLinks.XML:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<GadgetSection Name="Organizational" Enabled="true" DisplayText="">
<_locDefinition>
<_locDefault _loc="locNone"/>
<_locTag _locAttrData="DisplayText">GadgetSection</_locTag>
<_locTag _locAttrData="DisplayText">Link</_locTag>
</_locDefinition>
<Link DisplayText="How to use Remote Web Workplace" Url="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115334" _locId="UseRWW"/>
<Link DisplayText="How to configure Outlook to access your email over the Internet" Url="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115339" _locId="ConfigureOutlook"/>
<Link DisplayText="TS" Url=https://remote.contoso.com/Remote/tsweb.aspx?targetMachine=MyTS _locID="useTS" />
</GadgetSection>
The option for SBS stinks. It just adds the TS to everyone’s list.
I’ve tried this on EBS 2008, and the links appear etc. When I am logging on either of the servers though, the new window for the RDP session opens, but I get an error message popup saying:
“VBScript: Remote Desktop Disconnected
The remote computer disconnected the session because of an error in the licensing protocol. Please try connecting to the remote computer again or contact your server administrator.”
Any ideas would be most welcome!
Thanks!
looking forward to trying this out – very nice tip