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James_125728's avatar
James_125728
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Jul 22, 2013

RDS Farm not Balancing

Here's my setup:

 

  • 1 server hosting RDS Gateway & Web Access roles
  • 1 connection broker
  • 2 RDS Sessions hosts in a farm
  • (All are Windows Server 2008 R2)

I have the Session Hosts load balanced via my LTM as described in the RDS Deployment Guide. The Gateway/Web Access server and the Connection Broker are just single servers and are not setup in the F5 at all.

 

I have a RemoteApp published to the Web Access server, and it works just fine... However, the load is not being distributed. Right now I have 20 sessions on Session Host 2, and only two on Session Host 1. Of those, 11 are disconnected but still logged in, and 9 are actually active (all on Node 2)

 

If I login to the F5 and look at the statistics for the Virtual Server, it says there is currently only 1 connection. I suspect this is part of the problem, since the pool is set to load balance via "Least Connections (member)"

 

Not exactly related, but it also appears to not be creating persistence records, (The virtual server is set to use MSRDP persistence, but none show up on the Statistics report.)

 

Any ideas?

 

 

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  • mikeshimkus_111's avatar
    mikeshimkus_111
    Historic F5 Account
    Jul 22, 2013
    Hi James, that doesn't make much sense. Are you sure that your clients are really connecting via the LTM? Is the RD Web Access server returning the farm DNS name that points to the VIP, or directly to the RDSH servers?

     

    Mike
  • James_125728's avatar
    James_125728
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    Jul 22, 2013

    Web Access configuration is set to "One or more RemoteApp sources:" and I have specified the RDS Farm name (which points to the VIP).

     

     

    In order to get that to work, I had to create an additional Virtual Server to load balance traffic to port 135. (Which I found in an *old* version of the RDS deployment guide.)

     

    If I disable that port 135 virtual server, I get this message when I try to add the farm as a RemoteApp source:

     

    "RD Web Access was not able to access [RDS Farm name]. Verify that the RD Session Host server name was entered correctly, that the server is running and connected to the network, and then try again."

     

     

    I can add my Connection Broker as the source, and it doesn't require port 135... but it's also not the way the Deployment Guide says to configure the Web Access server.

     

     

     

  • mikeshimkus_111's avatar
    mikeshimkus_111
    Historic F5 Account
    Jul 23, 2013
    Looks like we may have missed the port 135 virtual server guidance in the new deployment guide. It only seems to be necessary when adding the RDSH farm name as a source; once I've done that, everything works without any traffic hitting that VIP. We'll get the new guide updated with that.

     

     

    Once you've done that, we're back to the issue of connections not load balancing, correct?

     

     

  • James_125728's avatar
    James_125728
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jul 23, 2013

    Found this advice on a TechNet discussion thread:

     

    • On each of the server you will also need to go to the Remote App Configuration.
    • Go to the Remote App Deployment settings
    • Connection settings.
    • Change the FQDN to the FQDN of the Farm name

    They were using DNS round robin with Connection Broker load balancing, but this also seems to have helped with the load balancing problem in my environment. The connection counts listed in the F5 now appear to match the actual active sessions on my RDS hosts. I'll keep an eye on this for the rest of the day, but I'm optimistic that this is fixed.

     

     

    My only remaining issue is the lack of Persistence Records. They're still not being created.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • James_125728's avatar
    James_125728
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    Jul 23, 2013
    Sys::Version

     

    Main Package

     

    Product BIG-IP

     

    Version 11.3.0

     

    Build 3022.0

     

    Edition Hotfix HF3

     

    Date Fri Feb 22 00:00:34 PST 2013

     

  • mikeshimkus_111's avatar
    mikeshimkus_111
    Historic F5 Account
    Jul 23, 2013
    MSRDP persistence records should show up with that version. Assuming your msrdp persistence profile has the "Has session directory" option checked, and the connection broker is set to use token redirection, I'm not sure why they aren't showing up. Can you post the config of your RDSH VIP here?
  • James_125728's avatar
    James_125728
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jul 23, 2013
    ltm virtual ERP-RDS-TRAIN {

     

    destination 172.31.164.76:ms-wbt-server

     

    ip-protocol tcp

     

    mask 255.255.255.255

     

    persist {

     

    RDP-SessionHost-persist {

     

    default yes

     

    }

     

    }

     

    pool ERP-RDS-TRAIN

     

    profiles {

     

    RDP-SessionHost-tcp { }

     

    }

     

    source 0.0.0.0/0

     

    source-address-translation {

     

    type automap

     

    }

     

    vlans-disabled

     

    }

     

     

    ltm persistence msrdp RDP-SessionHost-persist {

     

    app-service none

     

    defaults-from msrdp

     

    timeout 300

     

    }

     

    ltm persistence msrdp msrdp {

     

    app-service none

     

    has-session-dir yes

     

    mirror disabled

     

    timeout 300

     

    }