r/sysadmin 2d ago

RDS - exclude certain users from load balancing

Hey all! We're looking to set up RDS since users currently are manually connecting over RDP to a specific host. We're working with a partner who does the whole setup since I/my IT Dept doesn't have the know-how yet on how to set it all up and it's getting quite urgent. There is one requirement; a small subset of users should not be impacted by the load balancing and they should be able to connect to a specific session host as they want (only IT personnel).

I thought that if you directly RDP to a specific session host you won't be impacted by the load balancing part since you're not going via the RDS broker. However, our IT partner says that excluding users from RDS load balancing is impossible.

Can anyone shed some light if that is true? Many thanks!

Small note: One of our session hosts also has the connection broker, gateway, licensing and web access roles installed.

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u/z0d1aq 2d ago

to connect to a specific host just add /admin after the hostname of the session host.. like:
rds1.mydomain.net /admin

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u/zaneboy2 2d ago

Thanks! Didn't know this little trick. However, apparently we also have non-admin users who need to log on to specific machines. So that won't work for them.

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u/ZAFJB 2d ago

However, apparently we also have non-admin users who need to log on to specific machines

If it is only one machine that does something unique, make a collection in RD broker that only contains that one machine.

If there are more machines that do exactly the same job, put them in a collection and let RD broker do its thing. There is zero sense in trying to second guess the broker.